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Innovation Is The Only Rational Response To The End Of Third-Party Cookies

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Wendi Dunlap, EVP, business intelligence & audience science, Mediahub

Mediahub Worldwide’s Wendi Dunlap is done with hearing about the cookie-pocalypse.

The end of third-party cookies (in the slowest demise ever) isn’t “Armageddon for marketers,” says Dunlap, EVP of business intelligence and audience science at the IPG-owned agency.

“This is just another phase of marketing,” Dunlap says on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks. “Smart marketers are still going to be able to drive results in the face of cookie deprecation.”

Without third-party cookies as a crutch, advertisers will have to get creative by testing new options, like alternative identity solutions, and by embracing oldies but goodies, like contextual targeting.

External forces, whether in the form of regulations or platform privacy changes, can be an opportunity to innovate, Dunlap says, and “recenter on the human, the person, the consumer – and not just their footprint.”

The two most important things that brands can do now are test everything and not freak out.

“It’s important that marketers don’t panic and really think strategically about who they want to test,” Dunlap says. “This is a really exciting time for exploration.”

Also in this episode: The trend toward outcome-based planning and measurement, what it means to be a “conscious” marketer,” adopting data ethics, dealing with signal loss and Wendi’s favorite sci-fi novels.

For more articles featuring Wendi Dunlap, click here.

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