Freelancers in the digital marketing industry primarily rely on consumers’ personal data. Nonetheless, as privacy laws reshape how media is bought and sold, the digital advertising industry should reset and rebuild.
Three major privacy shifts impact digital marketing; increased interest from regulatory bodies, web browsers moving away from third-party identifiers and cookies, and consumers wanting to know more about how their personal data is used. Whether you are doing lawn-care marketing or a front-end dev, knowing how to use user data is key in today’s market.
Why It’s Time to Go Cookieless
The third-party data that digital advertisers and even paid search advertising relied on for insights and targeting is fast disappearing, forcing marketers to get into discovery mode.
Firefox and Safari have already blocked third-party cookies, with Google Chrome poised to follow suit by 2023. Advertisers now have to find ways of accessing first-party data and leverage their own first-party data. That should happen regardless of the amount of data they have.
Although there’s an abundance of cookieless solutions on the market, what digital marketers and agencies need is a sustainable and privacy-safe solution. It’s best for them to adequately test and activate their campaigns using their own and their publishers’ first-party data.
In doing so, they will be able to safeguard themselves from data regulations, protect their privacy, and take ownership of their campaigns.
The First-Party Data Gold Rush
Those in the digital marketing industry should understand that consumers’ first-party data is the holy grail of digital campaigns. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, in particular, have a considerable advantage since their business model allows them to forge direct relationships with their clients.
It allows them to collect and use the customers’ first-party data, target more accurate business KPIs molded to their customer data and also ask for reviews.
For traditional retailers and brands, direct relationships with customers can be forged further through investments in loyalty programs and other self-owned digital platforms. Increased focus on the customer experience can also help you access more first-party data.
Advertisers often have a more challenging data journey. They can’t solely rely on their first-party data because it won’t have scale. The data must get combined with insights into where and how customers interact on the Internet. Those insights sit with publishers since they have a first-party relationship with whoever visits their websites. The same cannot be said of advertisers.
According to Elizabeth Brennan, the head of the advertising strategy at Permutive, the reality of brands’ first-party data is that it isn’t enough to create scalable marketing activity.
For this reason, advertisers need to work with infrastructure vendors and ad tech players who can easily access 100% of the population instead of those who only have an identifier. Thus, publishers are increasingly becoming guardians of scalable, targetable data in today’s privacy-first way of working.
Why Publishers Are Ready for Cookieless Advertising
The recent move by Safari and Firefox to ban cookies shows that publishers have always been ready for cookieless advertising. Apple was the first to implement the privacy-first way of working before the other publishers followed suit. Today, publishers can’t reach audiences on Firefox or Safari. When Chrome bans cookies, understanding all online audiences will be harder.
Publishers can tell marketers a lot more about their audience’s preferences and behavioral insights than anyone else—all without intruding on their privacy.
This is primarily made possible by leveraging first-party data to create Publisher Cohorts. These are groups of consumers with similar characteristics. The groups are built at the source directly and proven to outclass campaigns that leverage third-party cookies.
In today’s digital advertising ecosystem that’s largely disrupted by privacy issues, publishers have significant customer proximity.
They also leverage technology as an enabler for capturing each interaction on-site in a way that safeguards data privacy. Moreover, they can access the real-time insights they need to build valuable Publisher Cohorts that advertisers can use for targeting.
Privacy and Performance with No Trade-Offs
Permutive’s Audience Platform for Advertisers is designed to fortify and activate the data that advertisers and publishers hold—all while keeping it safe and private.
It allows advertisers to connect seamlessly with other data owners, including publishers, and reach their targeted audiences by harnessing the power of the first-party data shared by both entities. This is done via one streamlined and privacy-safe point of access.
By having one point of access, the data and insights are powered by on-device technology or privacy-preserving edge. It’s only processed on each user’s device, securing it all the more. In such an ecosystem, personal identifiers and data stay on the devices without getting leaked to unauthorized advertisers. Likewise, it’s easier for real-time data processing to happen.
In an advertising ecosystem where data doesn’t leave the platform, it’s easy for advertisers and publishers to maintain full control of the data, all the way from insights to campaign activation.
Advertisers can choose to introduce their own data to match or complement the model without exposing the new data to other entities. They can also tap into publishers’ first-party data, or leverage both sources to create more impactful campaigns.
Such an ecosystem provides an all-in-one platform for advertisers and publishers to synthesize their first-party data and use it to a great effect during campaigns. It also enables them to fully understand their first-party data, upload it safely, and garner insights on how the target customers are spread across different devices, as well as their affinities and interests.
According to Brennan, insights are a powerful tool, but it’s the activation of the first-party data that makes the difference.
An easy way to create impactful campaigns is by scaling existing audiences by providing first-party data access to publishers and using that to mirror the audience definitions built into the third-party data.
Managing multiple publisher relationships on one platform is essential in maintaining data privacy when using first-party data. Moreover, the relevant adtech is already developed and ready for deployment.
Final Thoughts
In the modern age of data reset, advertisers are moving on from third-party data, which makes those with first-party data, such as freelancers, in a very good position.
Embracing first-party data can help them create more accurate and far-reaching campaigns while avoiding non-compliance issues. Also, by leveraging the vast volumes of data publishers hold, it will be easier for them to pinpoint where customers interact on the web. In doing so, it will be easier for advertisers to access the sustainable and privacy-safe cookieless solution we’ve all been yearning for.
