How advertisers are moving from cookies to a multi-ID landscape

For decades, online advertising has relied upon a consistent, ubiquitous identifier: the cookie. Yet the cookie’s days are waning. Even though Google has delayed its cookie deprecation plans (again), there will eventually come a day when the Chrome browser no longer supports third-party cookies.

Other major browsers like Safari and Firefox already default to cookies off, so no matter when Google finally makes the change, it’s clear that the world has entered a post-cookie era. Another way to think about this is as a multi-identifier era, where brands must use multiple tools and tactics to find and understand their customers across online environments.

Modern media consumption spans multiple channels, making the advertising landscape fundamentally omnichannel. And this won’t change; the industry will only be further entrenched in a multi-ID world. In mapping this changing landscape, brands must be aware of some major areas and key terms to ensure they’re ready to play in a new paradigm.

Advertising still largely relies on cookies, but the open market is a multi-ID space

The identifiers are the signals that drive targeting, optimization and measurement. Cookies remain the key to this area. Currently, 78% of digital advertising still involves cookies, highlighting their ongoing significance even as the industry evolves.

Whether cookies deprecate or not, advertisers need to understand where they will and will not work. One area to be aware of is the gap between open web supply and premium publishers. Less than 20% of bid requests on the open market have a single ID tied to them, showing that the open web is invested in the multi-ID landscape. Meanwhile, premium publishers have their own IDs that aren’t interoperable without the right technology.

Effective targeting requires a combination of methodologies

Then there’s targeting. There are various methodologies for targeting audiences based on different signals. The preferred method for when third-party cookies go away isn’t yet determined — it could be deterministic, probabilistic or contextual.

Because effective marketing is about knowing the individual and the moment, the best targeting combines signals related to both. Deterministic targeting is about the individual, while contextual targeting is about the moment. Most marketers should ask themselves how they can best do both and still get an accurate read of the customer journey across the entirety of the media ecosystem. Targeting should not appear fragmented and siloed to a consumer, even though media is bought in silos.

Crosswalk solutions provide effective data management in a multi-ID landscape

Data management is essential as brands consider new technologies that facilitate data ownership and orchestration. In a multi-ID landscape, this is one of the most confusing areas of modern marketing.

Some brands think they have what they need with tools like customer data platforms, but these lack the capabilities to handle multi-channel, multi-ID marketing because they struggle to bring insight outside of a brand’s known data.

Instead, brands need an enterprise identity platform (EIP) designed to cleanse and harmonize data, ensuring its accuracy and usability across the entire technology stack. This will help merge known customers with prospects to assess the total available market. By providing a consolidated view of customer identities, EIPs facilitate improved targeting, personalization and compliance with data protection regulations.

Armed with data management, brands can move on to media activation technologies that facilitate the application of data to omnichannel advertising campaigns. The cookie era prioritized tools like DSPs for media activation, but a multi-ID landscape requires a crosswalk solution. This process involves mapping anonymous digital identifiers to personally identifiable information to unify online and offline data for a comprehensive view of customer behaviors. As brands activate in multiple channels, they must coordinate across those channels. Without this crosswalk solution, brands will suffer from diminished scale across their media channels.

This matters as the number of channels offering advertising inventory proliferates. Brands can build plans that touch on any combination of open-web digital, in-app, social, walled gardens, retail media, CTV, linear TV, direct marketing and OOH.

As cookie support wanes, private marketplaces (PMPs) are gaining popularity. These invitation-only marketplaces allow high-caliber publishers to offer their ad inventory to a select group of advertisers. PMPs provide more control over the ad buying process and are known for premium inventory not available on the open market, but they only work when brands have an identifier.

AI enables additional insights and predictions for extended reach and future success

Of course, all advertising needs to be measurable, which is where insights come in. Of all the available technologies, methods and metrics for measuring the performance of advertising campaigns, nothing may be as crucial as ROAS. Brands can’t optimize their future spend without insight into their returns.

Another pathway brands are likely eager to explore is artificial intelligence and its role in media. While there is a lot of buzz around AI, the most critical piece in the multi-ID landscape is likely AI-driven probabilistic targeting. This blends deterministic methods, which rely on known customer data, with probabilistic techniques that infer behaviors based on patterns and probabilities. This approach enables advertisers to extend their reach beyond the confines of existing data sets by identifying likely customer behaviors and preferences.

With consumers changing media habits, the advertising landscape has become omnichannel, meaning the multi-ID landscape is here to stay. While a large portion of digital advertising might currently rely on cookies, the open market is already a multi-ID space. This will likely help push the rest of advertising to follow suit.