Horrendously late to the party and with a sense of belonging that is not really earned, Iâm here to explain cookies with random deli metaphors and the grace and poise of a bull in a deli.
First-party cookies are small data files created by the website you visit, stored in your browser to remember settings and login statuses for a smoother user experience.
To explain what I think is going to happen when they are removed, itâs probably helpful to explain what first and third party cookies actually are in detail, so strap in, Iâm going to give you possibly the strangest metaphor for a technology youâve ever heard.
Imagine you go to a deli (told you), and the deli server gives you a note with your order number on it, then later when you return to the deli, they read the note and by the note they now know who you are and what you ordered. Thatâs basically what a first party cookie is. Itâs a snippet of code that a website sets and then retrieves to work out who you are and provide you a better experience. Harmless right?
Third-party cookies are created by domains other than the one you're visiting, used mainly for tracking and online advertising across different sites to personalize ads and content.
Now imagine that there are a bunch of random people in the deli, all part of a gang called the Deli Boys, and whilst you arenât looking, theyâre stuffing their own notes in your pocket about what you are doing in the deli.
Then, when you are out and about, perhaps you go into a flower shop. A Deli Boy gang member in the flower shop takes the sneaky notes out of your pocket and updates them with the fact you went to a flower shop and puts them back in your pocket. Any shop you enter where the Deli Boys are, they keep updating the notes. And by doing this, they can build up a profile of who you are and sell that to an advertiser who wants to sell you something.
Thatâs how third party cookies work. They are set when you enter a website (deli), but not by the website themself (deli server) but by third parties (the weird deli miscreants). These differ from the first party cookies as they can be accessed and updated whenever you visit a website (shop) that contains the third party code (a Deli Boy). Much like the fact the deli server canât work out the other shops youâve been in, websites with first party cookies canât tell where you have been apart from knowing youâve been to their site before. Third party cookies can track you over the entire internet. And eventually theyâre going to be banned by Google Chrome, the world's largest web browser by market share.
The removal of third-party cookies should push the advertising industry towards more privacy-centric methods, increasing reliance on first-party data and innovative tracking technologies like contextual advertising.
We donât know exactly how this is going to take place but what we do have are insights from the now legendary âApp Tracking Transparencyâ scheme Apple put into place. You will have undoubtedly seen this before, and if you worked in advertising and dealt with Facebook ads, you are probably now quaking as if youâve just seen the Deli Boys roll by.
It was basically a pop-up Apple introduced in all apps that asked the user whether they consented to being tracked. Thatâs it, and this single handedly managed to wipe $12 billion a year off of Facebookâs profits alone, as they couldnât utilise third party tracking as prolifically as they were before.
That is cataclysmic.
However, marketers still gotta be marketing. So where is the marketing spend that was going to be spent on behavioural-marketing going to go?
Most advertising now is behavioural-based, meaning it relies on reading the behaviours of users as they traverse the web. This is the reason youâll randomly see an ad on a website for something you were just talking to your friend about. Third party ad companies have tracked your behaviour, and accurately matched it to millions of other people who displayed similar behaviours and went on to buy the product in question. Pretty creepy huh? But without the ability to track you across the web (a crackdown on the Deli Boys if you will, last one I promise), they wonât be able to do this anymore, and this is why we saw Facebookâs profits tank as they became less accurate with targeting.
Weâre going to see two main shifts in the ad ecosystem when this process is all finally said and done.
Contextual advertising is going to become much more prevalent.
A new, more decentralised marketplace will open up for first party data.
Contextual advertising involves displaying ads based on the content of a webpage rather than user behavior, aligning ads with relevant topics or keywords present in the content.
For 1, this means that instead of advertisers following users round the web like a Brightonian seagull follows a hungover fresher, theyâll instead have to rely on the context of where the user is to target.
Imagine you have a running app and you want to promote it. You used to be able to find people who had searched and browsed running material (even on sites you don't own), and then follow them across the interent, absolutely blasting them with stupid ads that featured awful running puns. But as is becoming increasingly common, you wonât be able to do that fully by 2023. Instead youâll have to advertise your app on relevant websites, like running forums and running based Youtube channels. And this leads to point 2.
This shift is going to improve the value of first party data.
Imagine you run the running forum (great pun there and the fourth use of the word âimagineâ by me in this blog, take that John Lennon) I mentioned earlier. Historically, youâd be able to earn advertising money by installing third party ad tech on to your site, and allow the third party advertisers to advertise whatever they wanted on your site, didnât have to be related to running, it could be for hair plugs or any number of things, but it was all related to the user.
However, the future is going to mean that your advertising space has increased value, as you are one of the only people in the world who run such an illustrious forum. A marketplace of first party providers is going to blossom, and a more decentralised advertising ecosystem will flourish, as advertisers donât just YOLO 100% of their budget to Facebook, and instead look to partner with different first party vendors.
Like I said about 5 minutes of rambling ago, Iâm in no way early to this party, people have been writing about this for years. But no one has used deli puns to do it, so if you are an upcoming deli brand and want to advertise with some sweet first party data, Iâve got bills to pay so hit me up.
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