Data Collaboration: The Solution to a Cookieless Future in Digital Advertising

By Lotame 's Nishanth Raju , Managing Director, APAC

The future of the digital advertising industry remains uncertain, fraught with a litany of questions. Marketers want to dispel this confusion. 

Truthfully, no one knows what a cookieless future will look like for sure. Marketers have legitimate and growing concerns about its impact on personalised, relevant targeting. Despite this “fog of uncertainty” plaguing digital advertising, there’s a sure bet in Data Collaboration. Let me tell you why.

It’s not hyperbole to say third-party cookie deprecation has created a mess for marketers, exemplified by Google’s decision to yet again delay the deprecation of the third party Chrome cookie.  

Just as marketers codified the playbooks for engaging consumers meaningfully and respectfully, the sands shifted, albeit slowly and painfully — and once again the Privacy Sandbox is shifting slowly, dragging on any chance of meaningful change. 

The race to collect first-party data helps marketers address anywhere from 10 to 15% of their total audience. Context plays a helping hand by enabling a marketer to reach an additional slice of visitors based on those “context clues” they’ve left behind. A sizable hole is left in a marketer’s total audience, that all important brand awareness at the top of the funnel. This vacuum creates an unignorable addressability gap. 

What’s a marketer to do? Conveniently, the walled gardens (Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, Google) have sizable audiences and datasets for marketers to tap into but never take away! In fact, eMarketer forecasts that 66% of worldwide digital advertising spend will go to the walled gardens in 2024. Many will decide to only spend in walled gardens, and to those marketers, I share this word of caution. If you only advertise in walled gardens, you are competing for the same attention across every industry — clothing brands, car manufacturers, real estate, QSR, etc. If two’s company, how many’s a crowd? 

There is a silver lining… 

Attention is the holy grail for marketers, and the open web is flush with it. Consumers do spend most of their time outside the walled garden platforms. The path to growth for marketers is paved in data collaboration, both within your own “walls'' and with external partners. 

First, get your house in order. Now is the time to break down those internal data silos and collaborate within your organisation. By integrating data from multiple touchpoints along the customer journey, marketers can gain a more holistic understanding of how different marketing efforts contribute to conversions and sales. A single source of truth can also do wonders for your team collaboration, innovation, and creativity. 

Second, introduce a real change mindset into your organisation via external data collaboration. Those with limited authenticated first-party data are not excluded from the benefits of these partnerships. By tapping into all your first-party data beyond emails, you’ll find the scale for a statistically significant overlap with the right partner. The benefits are manifold. Data collaboration allows marketers to access a more comprehensive view of their target audience to improve targeting outcomes. With access to richer data sets, marketers can personalise their advertising messages and experiences at a more granular level, increasing relevance and engagement with consumers. Finally, collaborating with other organisations or platforms can provide access to new audience segments or channels that may have been previously untapped.

Collaboration requires an embrace of change

Data collaboration requires change, something marketers are well acquainted with. No one said it would be easy, but nothing worthwhile is. The sheer volume of solutions coming to market (14,000+ at last count) and confusion over which technology offering is needed are significant challenges to overcome. The good news is marketers are not alone in these challenges. Smart collaborations across the industry and within organisations will prove the real competitive advantage in this next phase of digital transformation. 

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