SAN FRANCISCO, CA — The way the online advertising business has targeted audiences for years is being ripped up – but marketing technology vendors are trying to see the glass half-full.
Google has declared it will phase out all third-party cookies – the tiny, user-side files that store information – from its Chrome browser by 2022.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, LiveRamp agency partnerships GM Daniella Harkins says the news is a blow – but there is silver lining.
“It’s almost earth shattering to our industry,” Harkins says. “(But) with change comes opportunity.”
Specifically, Harkins imagines two positive trends flowing from the news:
- “If we do this right and put the right type of players back in control, we have an opportunity to reduce waste, to reduce duplication, to reduce fraud, which is a really good thing.”
- “This can be a really pivotal moment in driving connected television. We’ve had a couple of years of starts-and-stops … it hasn’t really scaled across the broader ecosystem. This is a trigger point for us to now focus on that and make that happen as well.”
The writing was arguably put on the wall for cookies when GDPR was introduced a couple of years ago, placing tighter limits on what marketers and platforms could do with user data.
In Europe, explicit cookie consent directives had already begun to eat away at cookies’ effectiveness.
Subsequently, greater user control over third-party cookies in Safari and Chrome had further reduced the extent to which advertisers can depend on the technique.
It all helps add up to make a world in which marketers will have to benefit more from an opted-in relationship with a consenting user than from cookie-ing them around the web.
But Harkins is relaxed. “Now different partners are starting to think about inserting the individual into a bid stream so that we’re not necessarily losing how we can transact,” she says. “I think that fundamentally is really going to help drive the industry forward.”
The interview was carried out by Beet.TV director of editorial and strategy Jon Watts.
It took place at RampUp, LiveRamp’s summit for marketing technology in San Francisco, presented by ZEFR.
For more videos from the series, please visit this landing page.
