How are UK Businesses Experimenting With Cookieless Alternatives?

Post the release of Google Chrome’s third-party cookie deprecation policy, brands and marketers, first-party data targeting is prone to become a new normal for advertisers. They have started experimenting with cookieless alternatives, such as Google’s Privacy Sandbox, CDPs/identity resolution and data clean rooms as a wall against the storm.

After Google Chrome’s official third-party cookies phase-out policies came into action, the ad tech industry responded differently to the turmoil. Some took it as an awakening call and started looking for alternatives to their third-party targeting tactics. For instance, SJC Media integrated Optable’s privacy-safe advertisement capabilities to foster its privacy-compliant marketing strategies. Whereas, other marketers still consider it a lost battle. 

A 2024 study by Basis Technologies revealed that 33.8% of marketers and advertisers are not confident about reaching their target audiences if Google Chrome follows through on its plans to completely deprecate third-party cookies. 

How did global advertisers respond to Google Chrome’s third-party depreciation? 

Basis Technologies, a global provider of programmatic advertising, surveyed over 200 professionals at agencies, brands and publishers to know their insights on Google’s third-party phaseout. Around 66% of the organisations have implemented new targeting or measuring solutions within the last year as a response to the policy. Here are a few more takeaways from the study: 

• More than 88.2% of marketers and advertisers believe that precise audience targeting and measurement is more important to their colleagues in the advertising industry than protecting consumer privacy.
• While, 13% of the marketers say that they are exploring new identity solutions to implement in 6-12 months, and 11% have no current plans for new solutions.

What alternatives are global organisations choosing to establish a Cookieless World? 

Post the release of Google Chrome’s third-party cookie deprecation policy, brands and marketers have already started to restructure their advertising strategies. They have started experimenting with popular cookieless alternatives, such as Google’s Privacy Sandbox, CDPs/identity resolution and data clean rooms as a wall against the storm. Undoubtedly, the use of first-party data for targeting is prone to become a new normal and for good reasons. 

For instance, Havas Media Network UK debuted an AI-powered marketing engagement solution, Converged, to empower advertisers to make efficient audience-led media decisions in a cookieless future.

MIQ integrated its independent privacy-sandbox-powered APIs as its initiative to introduce 100% audience targeting in the UK. It enables advertisers to build ID-less custom audiences for optimised conversations based on real-time events. 

Qonsent and Driver Studios also debuted their privacy-first interactive advertising solutions, enabling marketers to forge deeper connections and collect consented data directly from the engaged adult consumer. 

In the context of third-party cookie depreciation in Chrome, larger signal loss emerged throughout the advertising segment. It’s going to become critical each day, increasing the complexity of collecting and organising first-party data for segmentation and personalised targeting. To combat this challenge, marketing teams need to strike a balance between using second-party data and building up their own first-party data, catering to the cookieless future.