Just a few short weeks ago, the digital advertising industry stopped in its tracks for a moment when Google announced that it no longer plans to deprecate third-party cookies on Chrome.
But that’s all the pause this announcement warrants—a moment.
The trajectory of digital advertising remains unchanged. There are plenty of signs that the investments advertisers have made in cookie alternatives are already paying off. If anything, the need for innovation is only accelerating.
The advertising technology space faces significant challenges, including the loss of other established audience signals like mobile ad IDs and IP addresses, limited cross-site audience addressability, insufficient contextual data for programmatic advertising in CTV and regulatory uncertainties. These issues, although less headline-worthy than Google’s shifting plans, have substantial implications for publishers and advertisers.
That’s why it’s so vital for advertisers and publishers to look past Google’s evolving position on cookies in Chrome.
Now is still the time for exploring new options.
Alternative IDs: Alternative IDs now represent a significant share of programmatic ad budgets and publisher revenue, even as cookies remain. This has been particularly evident since Google recommitted to its deprecation timeline in Q4 of last year, which led spending against alternative IDs in PubMatic’s traffic to essentially double.
Regardless of what happens to cookies in Chrome, these alternative IDs will remain an essential tool for buyers to activate their first-party data. Our data demonstrates that an omnichannel publisher who adopts a variety of IDs could potentially increase its revenue by about 30%.
There are dozens of alternative IDs in the market. Tools allowing publishers to manage, implement and configure multiple IDs will remain crucial to future-proof their digital advertising revenue.
Transactional data and sell-side targeting: Retailers and ecommerce entities are harnessing the power of transactional data to fuel programmatic advertising. In parallel, sell-side targeting is taking off: New and established data companies are beginning to activate their data in private marketplaces and curating media.
Ultimately, sell-side targeting enhances access to programmatic budgets, expands reach and boosts advertiser ROI and publisher yield.
Audience modeling: Using data science, sophisticated buyers are carving out a competitive edge in media buying by using first-party data to create lookalike models or audience cohorts.
Collaborating with the sell-side, these buyers are enhancing data fidelity, ensuring privacy by protecting personally identifiable information (PII) in-house and, crucially, making these solutions widely accessible to all their clients. Concurrently, publishers are extending the reach of their authenticated audiences to boost both reach and yield.
Contextual innovations in CTV: CTV inventory offers the potential for unique contextual signals that solve many targeting gaps seen in programmatic advertising. In this historically cookieless environment, supercharged by AI, marketers and media companies have the opportunity to unlock a wealth of contextual signals to attract more brand budgets to the open internet’s programmatic channel.
No sunk costs
In recent years, discussions of these alternative technologies for ad targeting and measurement might have focused on their applicability within a cookieless world. However, that’s only because cookie deprecation was a tangible, seemingly urgent issue.
The value of these alternatives actually extends so much further than solving cookie deprecation—and this innovation has been long overdue.
No matter what third-party cookie availability ends up looking like in Chrome, the rollercoaster of the last few years will prove well worth the ride. The industry’s significant acceleration in investment toward alternative IDs indicates that we’re progressively shifting toward new and innovative solutions, irrespective of Google’s decisions.
The innovation wave is not going to subside—it hasn’t even crested yet. The advertisers and publishers that achieve the greatest success over the next few years will be the ones that maintain their commitment to riding it.
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.
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