By this time, you’ve likely heard the news – cookies are slated for extinction, and the future of targeting and attribution is going to be heavily reliant on using 1st-party data. But what does this really mean in practical terms?
Ask for First-Party Data!
When using Google campaign manager to tag all digital impressions and clicks, third-party cookies allow us to “mark” all users who have seen an impression or clicked on an ad, and then anonymously track that user by re-identifying their cookie ID if they come back to the website at a future date to complete the conversion.
Without being able to anonymously “mark” the users, when the user clicks through on an ad, the advertiser needs the user to self-identify when they reach the website. Because the advertiser is also capturing data from the click-through URL, this allows the advertiser to connect the click activity on the ad the user came from with the conversion on the website that may happen during the same session or at a future date.
For example, asking the user to provide their email address immediately on the landing page visit for X% off their purchase, allows the advertiser to capture the user’s 1st-party data (i.e., PII or personally identifiable data like name, email address, phone number, etc.) to make the match from ad to sales data. Plus, in order to access first-party data, you’ve already gone through the process of gaining consent to opt-in to messaging or use of their data. This gives the user added transparency and builds up your own brand validation.
Build Segmentation Capabilities
Capturing the user’s PII on the landing page visit also allows the advertiser to create segments of users to use for retargeting advertising later. The advertiser can track which users have converted and which have not and can customize the messaging on the ads accordingly. You may be wondering, ‘How is all this data and PII segmentation managed?’. This is where CDPs become important. A CDP is a Customer Data (Management) Platform. This is a tool that allows advertisers to categorize and segment the user data they collect from the website, then push those segments into platforms to activate advertising against.
This is just one of many solutions available to supplement and eventually replace the internet’s original tracking method via cookies. Is this approach right for your business? Let’s discuss!
