In 2022 brands need to start taking a stance on privacy

Bettina Traurig, Paid Social Business Director at Mindshare UK

The transformation into a cookieless future has begun and advertisers are feeling the first impacts of declining data signals and increased CPA’s. While third-party cookies dominated the digital advertising space many of the world’s leading web browsers like Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari have started the process of phasing them out.

Third-party cookies allow advertisers to follow potential customers across the digital space and re-target them with relevant ads. Google redirecting users on their laptop to a brand’s website and then Facebook showing them on their phone relevant product ads – be it the same product they looked at or the same product category from a different brand – in their newsfeed a day later is a typical user experience. This undoubtfully has been the biggest unique benefit of digital marketing. 

However, consumers take a different stance. YouGov found in a recent survey that 85% of consumers would boycott a company that repeatedly shows disregard for protecting consumer data and while 58% feel like they have no choice but to hand over personal data, 80% try to limit this and don’t actually want to share their data. Hootsuite reports on upward trend in usage of ad blocker tools YoY, with 43% of internet users reporting using an ad blocker in 2022 and the highest percentage is seen across 16–34-year-olds. This trend highlights that consumer’s become more aware that their data is being collected and trying to stop this. 

The loss of third-party cookies and transferable user IDs means that consumer data is now trapped in walled gardens, the ecosystem of each data-collector. This results in big players like Google, Amazon and Facebook to come out as winners, while those relying on publisher-shared data to power their targeting, like programmatic display or multi-channel remarketing, will feel the impact the most. However, this does not address the privacy issue so many consumers are increasingly feeling.

It’s time for brands to stop looking at the workarounds of third-party tracking and start building trust with consumers about their privacy. While it is too early to tell what a new cookieless world will look like, brands need to start looking long-term into the future. Marketers who react to the third-party cookie phase-out by simply adopting one of the alternative tracking options to fill the gap in their attribution strategy will likely run into the same issues a few years down the line, having lost all trust of its consumers on the way. 

Brands need to acknowledge that consumer data is profitable for them and offer a value exchange. Building a robust strategy to transparently collect first-party data will be essential to this. First-party data can be used to sync with platforms such as Google or Facebook and allow them to stay hyper-relevant with their targeting. First-party data strategies also give back control to the brands for the level of quality of the data they use in their advertising. Permission marketing will be key here, making sure consumers know their data is being collected and understand how it is used. 

However, brands should not fall in the trap of investing the majority of their advertising budget into one platform to reduce fragmentation of data insights. Especially for the mid-funnel level mindset-planning will be essential for success. At Mindshare we started the process three years ago, working to enable our clients to reach consumers through contextual advertising and stop relying on third-party data. Using consumer insights to understand when there is a moment of need for a specific brand and then access each publisher’s unique first-party data-signals to appear in the right space at the right time gives back scale and relevance to brands, without privacy violations.

Most importantly, mindset planning allows brands to effectively use not just the walled gardens but all publishers. For example, our insight showed that consumers are especially willing to order food when they do improvement work in their home. Creating a YouTube channel list of home-DIY videos as well as targeting DIY keywords on Pinterest and showing a delivery ad for a fast-food brand in this space allowed us to appear while consumers are in the mindset for purchase without using third-party data. Quality of the insight, scale of the data-signal and a strong creative are key for the success of mindset planning.

Without a doubt losing third-party tracking is one of the biggest shifts the digital marketing eco-system has ever experienced. Marketers and brands must be prepared for privacy protections and fuel data-driven marketing with trust and transparency. Finding the right targeting strategy will be more important than ever and brands need to avoid being unwantedly creepy and start to bring a value exchange in moments of need.