Shift Your Focus as Third-Party Cookies Phase Out
“You don’t need to put all your eggs or cookies in one basket”! Now the Cookie Crumbles!
Change is the only constant; technology is constantly evolving and today’s cutting-edge will become obsolete in a relatively short period. The technology advances so do the risks and challenges associated with it, staying current, adaptable, and open to innovation is essential for individuals, businesses, and society. This article discusses the prerequisites to join the bandwagon.
Google’s battle for browser privacy since 2020 has reached a point where they blocked third-party cookies, hence reducing cross-site tracking, particularly covert tracking that infringes individual privacy rights. All web browser giants are prepared to disintegrate third-party cookies. In the same boat, Google restricted third-party cookies on Google Chrome for 1% of users from 4th Jan 2024, as a testing phase before a broader rollout. Google’s new Tracking Protection feature intends to reach its completion stripe by completely disabling the third-party cookies by the second half of 2024.
Cookies play a significant role in the realm of the internet and various industries. Advertisers and businesses have relied on cookies for more than two decades for their tracking, advertising, and personalization needs. With the new cookie policy, Google ensures this is not the only way to reach the target audience.
Before delving into the third-party cookies phase-out and the alternative techniques to tackle third-party cookie death, let us discuss the role of cookies and third-party cookies in the information age.
What are Cookies?
Cookies are a block of data generated by the web server and stored on the user’s computer or a device used for browsing. This cookie stored in the user web browser helps the website to identify the user account, remember login information, and track their online behavior from their browsing history. This online behavioral information is shared with third parties to enhance their web design and improve their marketing strategy.
What are third-party cookies?
Third-party cookies are primarily used by advertisers to track user’s interests and show targeted advertisements. Cookies are employed by social media plugins to integrate sharing buttons on websites. These are the web contents that we are not intended to see, but they appear as plugins to attract the user’s attention.
Even though the primary objective is to track user’s interests and to improve marketing strategy, the privacy of users is compromised. The major concern is that these third-party cookies can be used for malicious purposes, such as tracking to steal user’s personal information or to deliver malware.
Even though there are options given on the web browser settings to disable third-party cookies and to clear the cookies from our personal computers or gadgets, those are not well used by most of the user communities. This is due to the unfamiliarity of the web browser options and the potential risk that can affect their personal information.
Shifting focus on the Zero Party Data and the First-Party Data
The marketer’s strategies of personalizing the target audience and customizing their services instead of generic display ads will face a threat, businesses need to identify alternative methods to deliver the right content to the right people.
What is Zero-party data?
Zero-party data can be deployed where the user voluntarily and proactively shares the information for the business or organization and is aware of what information is provided. This data can be collected through explicit interaction as well by filling out a form, surveys, questionnaires, and other preference centers.
Intentional means of collecting the data can be another alternate solution where the user intentionally performs a product review and ratings, opts in for a subscription, account registrations, and details obtained from interactive content like quizzes, and polls to name a few.
Interactive apps can also be designed in a way to collect user input. Social media engagement is another best alternative for data storing where the user creates a profile, shares posts, and engages with the content.
What is First-party data?
First-party data is the information collected from the user during their direct relationship and interaction with the website or service. Marketers and Publishers work with ID providers when users give consent to use their information when they visit the site, these agencies share the user information with the ID provider. The ID provider creates an ID for them which is used for ad targeting.
Another interesting option is Device Fingerprinting, mostly used to identify track, and authenticate user devices. The device fingerprinting can be used by the marketer to enable the site to collect data regarding the user’s device or browser. Though the device printing mimics third-party cookie behavior it stores data on the server side unlike cookies getting stored on the client side.
Contextual targeting is the best way to connect with your audience and track and match the content the user interacts with instead of tracking the individual user. This user-centric approach enables marketers to target and place their ads based on users’ current interests or the overall theme of the content. Therefore, companies can leverage this data and tailor their content catering to user preferences.
Power of Personalization Unveiled by First Party data’s brilliance
In the dynamic landscape of the technology sector staying informed, equipping oneself to the fast changes is crucial for businesses to thrive. The overreliance of the marketers on the cookies has created rage and panic. The marketers do not have a well-defined strategy to collect the first-party data in the first place.
The research findings of the McKinsey and the Nielson companies have unveiled a compelling reality Marketing technology can help brands measure audience behaviors, and their insights by maintaining a healthy relationship with the retailers which is a channel for first-party data collection. Embracing transparency, with these analytic systems with attribution capabilities the brand marketers can engage in more overt demographic targeting strategies.
A prime illustration of this is how the global giant Amazon underscores the effectiveness of first-party data by way of Contextual targeting and the science behind this is Data Analysis and Machine Learning. Amazon’s Demand Side Platform (DSP) uses Artificial Intelligence and ML to scrutinize the content of pages and the media where the advertisements are displayed. This system targets live audiences based on their current online activities rather than historical third-party data.
“Navigating through the uncharted waters of this cookie-less era demands the marketers to dance with the winds of change, waltz with AI, ML, and data partnerships, and let the user set the tone, pitch perfect”!
Preparing your site to run without third-party cookies
Image Credit: Jcomp Freepik
Preparing for the third-party phase-out should ensure that your site can operate without third-party cookies. To make your site independent of third-party cookies, audit the third-party cookie usage and eliminate it, to ensure that there is no link breakage. Test for your breakage using the Chrome flag, here the user can launch and activate the browsers to enable or disable its specific features and troubleshoot issues.
Consider Partition with CHIPS (Cookies Having Independent Partitioned State) for cookies that store data from third-party chat, maps, payments, and ad embeds. This setup allows developers to opt cookies into partitioned storage, a separate cookie jar at the primary domain of the site.
Use Related Website Sets (RWS) for cases where the cross-site third-party cookie is used within a small number of related sites. RWS provides cross-site access for the cookie, in this way, the company can declare a relationship among the sites allowing limited third-party cookie access for specific requirements.
Cross-sites with a small group of linked sites can use Storage Access API or web API, as most top-level/root-level pages require access to third-party cookies. Cross-sites with a small group of linked sites can use Storage Access API, most top-level pages require access to third-party cookies.
Storage Access API serves the purpose of enabling access to third-party cookies with the embedded iframe (also called inline frame where an HTML element allows embedding another html element in the current doc). This means that groups of related or linked sites can still make use of cross-site cookies in a limited context without having the risk of sharing the third-party cookies amongst unrelated sites allowing cross-site tracking or covert tracking and invading information without permission.
Lastly, other third-party cookie-related use cases must migrate to privacy-focused alternatives. Google’s privacy sandbox provides a wide range of built-in APIs to address specific use cases without using third-party cookies.
Wrap-Up
Upon deeper analysis of media coverage, there are odds against Google’s third-party phase-out and the Google Privacy sandbox as the concern lies around the fact that Google may benefit from the User activity data while resisting rival companies from accessing the data, and it could advantage its ad services. Google has work to do to resolve the concerns and stands still to phase out the cookies by H2 2024. As Google strides in resolving the issues, the publishers and marketers can buy additional time to plan and strategize impending the demise of third-party cookies, nevertheless, their sentiments remain optimistic
Explore these possibilities on your websites reducing vulnerability to the user community. Advertisers and publishers can continue to create their relevant content and advertisements with seamless user experience. There is no need to panic about this positive change as our main goal is to protect our user community from cybercrimes that guarantee a win-win.
