Third-party cookie deprecation… why it matters and where next?

If you haven’t been mixed up in SEO or don’t follow the trade press, Chrome (read Google) is deprecating (cancelling) third-party cookies. This follows Apple and Mozilla’s deprecations. Edge, based on Chromium, the Chrome OS, will most likely follow.

Third-party cookies have been a pillar of communication since shortly after the web was rolled out to the public. They work like this: when you visit a page and accept a cookie from that page, the page will follow you around the web. You will see ads for the brand or product on many other pages that you visit. This ‘always-on’ phenomenon has been a boon to marketers, who are currently panicking and lobbying against the deprecation.

Third-party cookies may be replaced by Google Topics, which target interests rather than brands and products delivered by third-party cookies, but the link will not be direct. In the world of Topics, if you search for a specific brand of shoe, direct SEO will deliver the links, but when you browse onward to other pages, Topics will estimate that you are interested in buying apparel and deliver links to broader clothing categories.

SEO will still be required to identify site content. So will paid search. However, the persistence of the brand-aware third-party cookie will be history.

What it boils down to is that lazy digital marketing will become a thing of the past.

During the age of traditional media (print, radio, television, OOH, etc.), advertising had to make an impression. Media was expensive, and if it didn’t make an impact, it made a loss. The material had to be relevant, creative and thought-provoking to capture one in one hundred. Third-party cookies have been cheap, with less loss entailed if the products and brands don’t make an impact.

Without that affordability and pervasiveness of reach, products and brands must return to the idea of impact to keep their heads above water. They must also develop and apply methods to capture the consumer in the short to medium-term as they move through the sales funnel.

I have written at length on the elements of the brand and marketing. You can find the columns at https://www.pressoffice7.com/brandguy. I’ll use the next couple of hundred words to give the questions that you need to ask yourself.

In terms of the brand, your identity and image need to be aligned, have a very narrow brand gap. Do you have a clear market and a niche or are you trying to reach anyone and everyone? Is your communication salient, does it persist in delivering emotional relevance across your market. Does it deliver resonance, become part of the consumer’s lifestyle? Does it transform the consumer?

Without the persistent reach of third-party cookies, wider touchpoint management becomes important. Where do consumers interact with the brand and at what stage in the sales funnel?

In the digital field, your website needs to align to the sales funnel and your email mechanism has to track behavior on the site and respond. Social media has to deliver the lead to your doorway. Yet digital is one of a set of touchpoints. What is the quality of the physical interaction? Is it responsive, does it deliver service, and how does it extend and validate post-purchase?

With the privacy movement, the demise of third-party tracking has been on the cards for a number of years. It comes as a relief that the change is materializing. The upside is that brands and marketing will become a greater force, but only if you rise to the challenge.