How marketers are rolling out cookieless strategies in 2024

In April, Google’s Chrome team announced the decision to delay — yet again — the deprecation of third-party cookies, this time to 2025. The reason cited was “ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators and developers.”

For many, the delay was both expected and welcome. Brands and agencies alike have expressed anxiety over how they will handle the loss of third-party cookies, and another postponement might feel like an additional chance to come up with a solution. But even though teams now have until next year, not only should they not wait, but there’s also no need to.

Brands and agencies should prepare now for third-party cookie deprecation and the associated heightened privacy concerns. As they work to prepare their first-party data strategies moving forward, there are some questions they should ask themselves and things to keep in mind to make sure they’re getting the most out of the cookie-free world.

To prepare for the cookieless future now, teams are running through a checklist

The potential of a brand’s first-party data is limitless. It offers insights into the most valuable audiences and is a powerful tool marketers can use to take control of their data destiny.

In a soon-to-be cookie-free world, where consumers’ attitudes, intent and behaviors change rapidly, the demand for personalization is at an all-time high, and optimizing first-party data to inform meaningful customer experiences is even more critical. For that, brands need to go deeper than traditional data strategies.

As marketers, publishers and networks work toward this deeper data strategy, they’ll need to consider the different aspects affected, both on an industry level and how those post-cookie changes will affect their business more granularly.

For example, with the loss of third-party cookies, the online third-party data ecosystem will likely suffer a loss of signals, so teams must consider how to replace those insights.

Marketers must understand how to conduct first-party research to stay abreast of evolving consumer sentiment and behavior, especially as these unprecedented times affect how consumers think, feel and act.

Additionally, marketers should ensure their data is always fresh to optimize their marketing engine. Data recency and freshness can be the difference between reaching someone at the precise point in their purchase cycle and marketers missing their window of opportunity.

While nearly half of all marketers cite scalability as their main limitation when building audiences, as consumer expectations for personalization increase, they must find the best way to evolve their segmentation strategy and keep pace.

As cookies inevitably disappear, with user and device IDs replacing them as the primary measurement form, marketers and publishers should also learn how to transition to new, more relevant metrics to account for this shift.

Given all these changes, teams will eventually face new budget structures and need to reevaluate the areas where they invest their money to ensure its effectiveness.

First-party data enrichment leads to more relevant insights

When marketers, publishers and networks know what their audiences value, whether it’s excitement or creativity, if they care about corporate responsibility or spend most of their social media time on TikTok or Instagram, these insights can make for much more powerful marketing. By personalizing messaging and speaking to consumers beyond their relationship with a brand, loyalty, lifetime value and more increase.

Once teams have an idea for their first-party data strategy, tapping into a partner who can enrich data with fresh and actionable insights will lead to better understanding, segmentation and more personalized experiences. These enhanced experiences with rich, relevant, real-time data lead to increased customer lifetime value for brands and their agency partners.