Cookie-based advertising is on its last legs, but not enough marketers have moved on. A full 75% of marketers still rely heavily on third-party cookies, according to a new Adobe study.
Going in the wrong direction. Some 45% of marketers are spending at least half their budgets on campaigns and other activations based on third-party cookies, according to the study. The report surveyed 2,667 full-time marketing and customer experience leaders in the U.S., Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and India.
Surprisingly, 64% plan to increase their spending on cookie-based activations this year.
Dig deeper: 3 ways marketers can prepare for a cookieless future
Writing on the wall. The real head-scratcher is how many marketers are aware of the opportunities lost when overlooking cookieless environments. Eight-three percent say at least 30% of their market is in environments where third-party cookies don’t work, the study found.
Nearly half of companies say over 50% of their potential market is found in cookieless environments like social media platforms and on Apple devices.
As a consequence, over three-quarters expect the end of third-party cookies will hurt their businesses, Adobe found. Thirty-seven percent expect a moderately negative impact, 23% expect significant harm. And 16% of marketers said the end of cookies will be “devastating” to their businesses.
Why we care. To be fair, marketers aren’t going all-in on cookieless strategies because tech giants like Google are waffling on their phase-out.
Brands should take a nuanced approach in order to meet their customers where they are and whether those environments use third-party cookies. But they should also keep in mind the spirit of the cookie phaseout, which is built around consumer privacy and trust. Deep relationships with customers are forged through intentional data sharing, where each side knows what the other knows.
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In the world of marketing, third-party cookies are a critical tool for tracking user behavior. A recent study by the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) found that 75% of marketers still rely heavily on third-party cookies to gain insights and inform their marketing strategies.
Third-party cookies are small bits of text code stored in web browsers that track user activity across websites. Marketers use this technology to build profiles of their target customers, and then create hyper-targeted marketing campaigns to better meet the needs of their buyers. Cookies also give marketers a snapshot of customer browsing behavior, so they can optimize their campaigns accordingly.
The ability of cookies to capture valuable data has made them essential to modern marketing strategies. Indeed, the DAA found that nearly three-quarters of marketers use them for a variety of reasons, including customer segmentation, analytics, customer service, and customer experience. The study also found that, among those who use third-party cookies, 89% said that it is their primary data source.
However, not everyone is sold on the use of third-party cookies. Privacy advocates argue that these cookies are intrusive, as they allow companies to track user activity without their knowledge or consent. In response to growing privacy concerns, many browsers and operating systems have begun to take measures to limit the usage of third-party cookies.
Although third-party cookies are falling out of favor with some users, they remain a critical element of modern marketing. As the DAA’s study shows, the vast majority of marketers still rely heavily on this technology to gain valuable insights and craft more effective campaigns.
