We don’t need a fortune cookie to tell you that the future of digital marketing is contextual

A topic that’s been on the marketing agenda for half a decade and is finally upon us. Cookie deprecation is fast approaching after continual deferment from Google, and the question on many marketers’ minds is: How will this impact us? While Safari and Firefox have been blocking cookies for a few years now, Google have taken their time to follow suit. But despite Google holding a nearly 60% share of the web browser market, we have been navigating nearly 40% of the open web in cookieless spaces for some time, which has given marketers time to begin to explore alternative solutions.

On 4^th January, Google disabled third-party cookies for 1% of its users globally, and by the end of the 2024, if not sooner, they will be gone in their entirety. So how will you be affected? We won’t sugarcoat the facts. You won’t be able to track or optimise towards conversions, nor will you be able to track users as they move between devices. But fear not, this isn’t as dire as it sounds.

With escalating concerns around personal data, consumers have increasingly had a chip on their shoulder about cookies. A study conducted by Nano in September 2023 found that 70% of UK adults masked their online data on a weekly basis.

Outside of using cookieless browsers, 55% of UK users said that they clear their browsing and/or cookie cache, 34% opt out of cookies, 33% browse in private/incognito mode and 29% use a VPN. While the methods for avoiding being tracked vary, this behaviour was not limited to one age demographic. Younger users said they intentionally used incognito mode when browsing, while older users prefer manually deleting their browsing and cache data.

Aside from concerns around data privacy and wanting to conceal private or personal searches, two of the top recorded reasons for cookie masking were directly related to advertising. 29% of users declared they wanted to avoid being retargeted with ads after searching for gifts for loved ones, particularly on shared devices.

Consumers and marketers might not agree on everything, but this is one thing they will certainly align on. If you had a pound for every ad that you were served for a specific product or similar that you had searched, after you had purchased it and therefore were no longer ‘in-market’, you’d probably not be reading an email on the depreciation of cookies because you’d have handed in your notice to enjoy your millions. While cookies do allow you to track cross-device, with many users opting for different browsers across different devices and not purchasing post-click, even with cookies, it is impossible to attribute all conversions to a specific campaign, meaning that unavoidably, there is wastage. But there is (one of many) solution(s) that readers may already be familiar with: contextual targeting.

A survey by IAB found that 81% of consumers prefer online ads that match the content they are viewing which suggests that those masking cookies aren’t trying to avoid your ads altogether, but they want to be served the most relevant, useful ads, in the moments that matter. Contextual targeting allows us to target the content, not the user. This means that serving your ads alongside the content that algorithms can identify as being the most relevant to your brand and ad, in that very moment. This allows you to find users that are most receptive to your advertising, targeting them based on their mindset, rather than past behaviour that may not now be relevant to them and their purchase journey. For example, someone looking to purchase a new TV would be served an ad while reading an article listing the top ten smart TVs under £500, not on an article about Storm Isha two weeks after purchasing one.

Gaining cut through in an age of ad blindess

With the total demise of cookies looming, many of our trusted partners have already launched their solutions, trialled and tested by thousands of household names to help navigate this next chapter. These cookieless solutions include Nano’s LIFT and GumGum’s Verity. Fuelled by sophisticated AI, the varied tech works to analyse the content of a page, not just looking at the URL and text, but analysing sentiment, video, audio and imagery to dig that bit deeper to develop a precise, human-like understanding of the content. The blend of AI and multi-level marketing (ML) allows for the targeting to understand nuance and decipher an exact interpretation of the content within its context.

But, how will we measure success? Don’t worry, you don’t need cookies to unlock the effectiveness of your ads served within the online eco-system.

MMM (mixed media modelling) is not a new solution, but it is certainly one that you should be embracing this year and beyond if you haven’t already. MMM brings together a holistic view of how all your marketing is working together, rather than looking at channels in silos while also examining wider influences such as PR, seasonality, cultural or economic changes, promotions and more.

Within the world of online advertising, brand studies have long been a useful tool to measure the incremental impact of specific activity. It allows you to measure a range of brand metrics from awareness, recall, consideration and purchase intent right through to softer metrics that help you to understand how your audience feel about your brand. This can include measurement such as favourability, brand perception and the impact of specific creative.

While there will always be a role for the more traditional KPI’s such as CPM, CTR, CPA, VCR and so forth, marketers are evolving the scope of how success is measured with more of a focus on attention. It is reported that the average person sees 10,000 ads every day but of those, it is thought less than a quarter are relevant. With users being oversaturated with advertising, naturally, they have developed a phenomenon known as ad blindness, where they both consciously and unconsciously ignore advertising. This means that advertisers are having to fight harder to grab and hold consumers attention to ensure their ads are cutting through the clutter and driving results against their planned objective.

Ad blindness means wasted delivery, impact and efficiency, but you can decide whether you accept that ‘that’s just how the cookie crumbles’ or start taking attention seriously.