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Signal loss and the art of stack maintenance
As Publishers, we've been hearing for years that the sky is falling due to the deprecation of the third-party cookie. Yet with each passing year, the cookie remains. What we have seen over the last few years is the significant deprecation in the value of the Third-party cookie.
- First, Apple has effectively blocked the third-party cookies in the Safari browser
- Second, while the the cookie can be used in the Chrome environment its utility is shrinking
- Third, the ongoing migration of users from Android to iPhone in the U.S. is reducing the available consumers to target
- Fourth: Android recently announced it is launching its own app tracking initiatives which allows users to opt out of the use of their Advertiser IDs to be shared
- Fifth, the introduction of new state regulations severely hamper the utility of what data does remain.
The ongoing challenges of tracking the effectiveness of campaigns, measuring outcomes, and normalizing data from multiple partners continues to grow as well. As we look towards the next 1~3 years, what we don't know may still far outweigh the things we do know. However, some things are certain:
- At some point in time, the third-party cookie will no longer be a functional tool for targeting consumers
- Privacy concerns by consumers will continue to grow
- New regulations restricting the utilization of different identity tools and targeting tools will continue to grow
- The willingness of the walled gardens to share what little data they do share will continue to shrink
- Agencies will continue to limit and consolidate the number of direct Publishers that they engage
- The value of data will continue to grow and accrue to those companies that are able to capture the necessary data and consent from their consumers
- CPMs will continue to be under pressure
- The number of potential tools and techniques that provide marginal benefit to publishers continues to proliferate, increasing the challenge of tracking, deploying and measuring adtech tools.
We believe that Publishers' primary role is to produce great content and create a community of readers who engage with that content. However, as a result of all these industry moving parts, we predict that publishers will be forced to both deploy additional technologies to replace pieces of the value the third-party cookie delivered while introducing new technologies to replace the signal loss.
Each technology will require managing a new connection point and sync with new partners (SSPs, DSPs, DMPs, Universal ID companies, etc.) that strains the already overstretched publisher resources. In order to remain agile (and profitable), the future-proof publisher will need to build process, teams, pipelines and tech to constantly build, measure, test, learn and optimize many monetization channels. (To read further about what these stacks look like, see our next post)
Read on to learn about the future proof stack...