Ogury commissioned IDC to conduct a global survey on 1,000 major brand and media agency executives, to get their perspective and understanding of the future of digital advertising in a cookieless world. Most of the polled executives (60%) agree that user tracking will soon become obsolete.
However, more than 40% of respondents are not familiar with targeting technologies that are independent of advertising identifiers.
Identifiers are disappearing, for the best
The survey also found that more than half of advertisers (60%) believe user tracking to be a source of reputational risk for brands. 56% of them think cookies and IDs represent a threat to user privacy, while 60% believe it is only a matter of time before they come to an end.
While some marketing decision-makers might wait for Google to officially phase out third-party cookies on Chrome by the end of 2024, the statistics above are surprisingly low as cookies are already unavailable on Apple’s Safari and Firefox, and overall opt-in rates for user tracking are getting increasingly lower as users reject tracking en masse.
Advertisers have limited awareness of alternative options
When asked about the forthcoming deprecation of third-party cookies and what changes need to be made, 32% of respondents said they will change the type of AdTech suppliers they are working with. Among them, 64% stated they will increase budgets toward suppliers that do not rely on third-party cookies or any personal data collection. Yet, 41% of all respondents are only moderately, or not at all, familiar with targeting methods other than the ones leveraging identifiers such as cookies.
This represents a huge opportunity for companies providing targeting solutions that don’t rely on advertising identifiers. However, these same companies have to evangelize their technologies, which might be complicated to understand since such solutions aren’t yet the norm in the industry.
One key concern: scalability
The survey reveals that advertisers are somewhat confident they can reach the right target at scale without identifiers. Indeed, 1 agency executive out of 2 (51%) and 61% of brands believe that organizations will still be able to reach their audience at scale following the deprecation of third-party cookies.
So, besides not being familiar with the cookieless options available, advertisers already have concerns about how these solutions can help them reach a large share of their target audience, ultimately replacing cookies.
Time for decision-makers to wake up
“Brands and media agencies will require guidance to navigate the new waters of alternative techniques to cookies, looking for innovative new partners to fill the void,” said Van Valdez, Associate Research Director, European Customer Experience at IDC. “However, for many, this highly technical area can be incredibly opaque.”
“Clearly, advertisers are not fully seeing yet how huge and impactful the privacy wave will be,” continued Geoffroy Martin, CEO at Ogury.
