Third-Party Cookies

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Shownotes

In today’s episode, get to know our guest, Ana Milicevic, a thought leader in the marketing space. She discusses the importance of third-party cookies, how they are used to connect different entities, and how privacy concerns have led to them fading in the coming years. Listen in as we discuss the changes, including browsers being able to block or restrict third-party cookies and the effects on how browsers are becoming even more privacy-friendly.

About the Guest

Ana is an entrepreneur, media executive, and digital data innovator. As principal and co-founder of Sparrow Advisers, she and her team of strategic consultants work with companies across Adtech, Martech, eCommerce, and media on strategy, scaling challenges, product, go-to-market positioning, and new market launches, innovation, services, and global field enablement. Earlier in her career, Ms. Milicevic held key leadership roles across product, strategy, technology, and services in early-stage startups, high-growth scale-ups, and established global companies like Adobe and SAS. She is a frequent speaker on data management, cross-channel marketing analytics, customer experience, innovation, and emerging markets.

Connect with Ana Milicevic

Key Takeaways

Third-party cookies are essential because they allow multiple different entities to read them. Changes in the last couple of years have focused on reducing the number of third-party cookies.
One way to reduce reliance on third-party data is to use first-party data. However, for some companies, this is not a viable strategy.
Publishers face challenges in stratifying their audiences and monetizing their content. Marketers must be better prepared to adapt to changes and utilize their understanding of the target audiences and how to reach them.
Europe has taken a stricter approach to data protection than the US, and the advertising and marketing industry is trying to figure out new ways to trade value between free content and advertising.

Quote

“I think that’s one of the universally recommended solutions for reducing one’s reliance on third-party data is great, just use first-party data. But for some companies, this is just not going to be a very viable strategy.” – Ana Milicevic

Highlights from the Episode

Can you throw some light on what 3P cookies are, how they became so central to digital media, and why is their landscape changing?

The use of cookies as a tool for advertising and tracking users has become more prevalent in recent years as advertisers have found ways to exploit vulnerabilities in web browsers to track users across different websites, even after they’ve logged out of those sites. This has raised concerns among privacy advocates that the use of cookies contributes to a “surveillance society.”

What are the impacts and the remedies to the incoming changes?

The impacts of the incoming changes are that digital advertising will no longer be able to rely on third-party cookies, and marketers will need to find a new way to target consumers. The remedies to these changes are for marketers to assess how they want to approach user identity, craft a data strategy, and understand how they will manage PII and non-PII.

Various privacy/regulatory considerations in different regions

There are various privacy and regulatory considerations in different regions. In Europe, regulators have been more stringent about customer data and pre-emptive protection of customers to limit the amount of data sharing. We have seen a distributed approach to data protection, with different states having versions of a data protection law. The advertising and marketing industry is stepping up to think of newer scenarios and how to make that value trade-off between, ‘Hey, you’re getting some fabulous free content here in exchange for some advertising.