Google announced in late July, 2022 that they will once again be pushing back the deprecation of third-party cookies until 2024. This decision comes after the company received feedback from advertisers that they needed more time to evaluate and test the Privacy Sandbox technologies. Anthony Chavez, VP of Google’s Privacy Sandbox Initiative, further explained this decision: “This deliberate approach to transitioning from third-party cookies ensures that the web can continue to thrive, without relying on cross-site tracking identifiers or covert techniques like fingerprinting.” Access to the Sandbox will expand to advertisers and marketers as well as the general public through the end of 2022.
The Privacy Sandbox is Google’s solution to a cookieless future. “Cookieless” refers to a way of marketing in which advertisers are less reliant on cookies, or bits of data that contain consumer personal identifiers. Currently, third-party cookies offer an easy way for marketers to find and re-target users who browsed their site or interacted with their media. However, consumers often end up bombarded by ads, even after purchasing a product or subscribing to a newsletter. As a result, efforts to reduce the use of third-party cookies have been implemented by leaders in the adtech space as we approach the full depreciation date.
Popular Cookieless Solutions
In anticipation of the depreciation, several alternative solutions have surfaced that advertisers and marketers can adopt:
- First-Party Data: This data is based on consumer provided emails and login details pulled from a website. This is considered the highest standard of consumer data because it’s more accurate, 100% opted-in, and maintains privacy. However, unless an advertiser has very strong website engagement, it can be difficult to aggregate this much data.
- Universal IDs: A Universal ID is a single identifier that recognizes the user in the digital marketing ecosystem and allows the information associated with the user to be passed onto approved partners in the supply chain. This solution empowers 1:1 deterministic mapping, using first-party data to create a user identifier while respecting privacy. The user ID is then used to find and target a consumer through ad placements, allowing for specific audience targeting.
- Contextual Targeting: This allows advertisers to serve ads that are matched to website, article, and video content rather than based on the viewer audience. This can be a good option for advertisers with a more general message but can pose difficulties getting a tailored ad in front of exactly the right audience.
- Data Clean Rooms: These are places where search platforms share aggregated rather than customer-level data. Advertisers can then add their first-party data in the same space, evaluating how different data sets match up. Inconsistencies between the data can mean that ads are not being served to the right audiences. This solution can potentially become extremely costly and is not a great fit for brands with limited advertising budgets.
Ultimately, brands will need to decide which solution, or combination of solutions work best for their healthcare marketing strategy. This decision will be based on a number of factors, including how targeted your audience is, what channels you leverage and where your audience engages most. Since healthcare marketing campaigns require brands to reach audiences based on a combination of clinical and demographic filters in order to be successful, advertisers could benefit most from a Universal ID solution.
Lasso’s Approach
Today, Lasso is the first healthcare marketing and analytics platform to enable the scale and reach needed for successful healthcare campaigns in a post-cookie world. As champions of user privacy and consent, we built our Identity Solution in-house, from email and offline data, compared to other solutions who outsource identity to external third-party providers. Lasso was engineered to be more deterministic, more granular, and more efficient from the start - that’s why our Identity Solution is ready to seamlessly support any future successor to the third-party cookie.
Introducing Unified ID 2.0 for Cookieless Healthcare Marketing
Unified ID 2.0 is an industry-leading, device-agnostic digital identifier that allows marketers to directly target audiences in all environments. We partnered with The Trade Desk to launch our unique framework for Unified ID 2.0 and improve how improve how marketers identify healthcare providers and consumers on the open internet.
The key feature of the Unified ID 2.0 workflow is the rotation of identifiers with salt hashers, so if a consumer linked to an ID and email becomes exposed, then it will automatically rotate to protect user privacy. We built a solution that detects when that rotation occurs, and we process new tokens and audiences daily, automatically refreshing user identifiers in activation platforms and consistently upholding user privacy and anonymity in auction bids.
So why is the constant refresh important? If IDs are not being updated in all downstream audiences, then when the rotation occurs, it’s like those individuals no longer exist. Our refresh process means no one disappears from an audience just because their ID changed, and there is no loss in targeting ability or determinism. Advertisers can trust that all of their targeted audiences will maintain maximum scale, audience quality, and reach - without even lifting a finger.
Preparing Today for a Cookieless Tomorrow
Even though third-party cookies are still used today, getting prepared now will set you up for success later. Google recent decision provides more time and opportunity to find the right solution for your brand, so you can be ready for success even when third-party cookies are fully deprecated.
Interested in learning more about Unified ID 2.0 and Lasso’s cookieless solutions? Get in touch with your Lasso representative or email us at sales@lassomarketing.io.
