cookieless future

The Cookieless Future Is Almost Here – Are You Ready?

Ever since Google announced the phaseout of third-party cookies, the internet has been swarmed with the term ‘cookieless future’. It has become a significant concern for business owners and marketers like yourself. 

But what exactly is cookieless and how will this affect you? To understand this, let us first understand what third-party cookies are and their role in marketing. 

Third-party cookies are tracking codes that are placed on a visitor’s device by domains other than the one you’re currently using. They are primarily used for tracking, data collection, and digital advertising. They also enable website owners to provide services like live chats

But What Does a Cookieless Future Mean?

The cookieless future is a significant change in the digital marketing world. Because of Google’s elimination of third-party cookies, marketers and website owners will have to rely on other forms of declared data. They will have to change their marketing models and find new ways of reaching out to their target audiences. 

Too much information at once? Let’s understand this in a little more detail. 

Why Are Third-party Cookies Important for Businesses?

Third-party cookies help businesses in a lot of ways. 

Using these cookies, you can collect data regardingabout which websites your users are visiting. You can even track different parameters like how much time they’re spending on a particular website or webpage. All this information helps businesses analyze and understand their target audience’s behavior. They can then create personalized content based on their interests and preferences and offer them what they’re looking for. 

Third-party Cookies Important

For example, if a user visits your website and accepts your cookies, you can start tracking their further actions. You will now be able to track which websites they move on to in the same or another tab on the web browser. 

Helpful for businesses, but creepy for users! Isn’t it?

Third-party Cookies Important

Why Is Google Phasing out Cookies?

Even though third-party cookies practically run the digital marketing game, Google, in 2021, announced their phaseout by 2024. Despite being aware of the ramifications that will follow, the search engine giant made this decision. But what is the reason behind this?

In their announcement, they mentioned that they’re eliminating third-party cookies in order to provide users with more privacy and a greater sense of security when it comes to their personal information. And in order to avoid havoc in the online advertising ecosystem. they decided to phase them out slowly instead of eliminating the cookies at once. 

Google Phasing

How Will the Cookieless Future Affect Different Parties

Let’s see what the cookieless future will look like for the different concerned players.

Users

The cookieless future means greater privacy for the users. Users will now have a say in what and how much information they are willing to share with the businesses they interact with online.

Businesses

Businesses and website owners will now have to rely on other sources of information in order to work on and improve their business models. 

Businesses

Marketers

Marketers are going to be the most affected section due to this phaseout. They will not be able to track users across websites and devices anymore. Therefore, it will become difficult for them to create personalized content, deliver targeted ads and measure the performance of their marketing efforts. 

Marketers

Best Alternatives to Replace Cookies in 2023

Google’s Privacy Sandbox

Google’s Privacy Sandbox is an initiative created to restrict the sharing of user data. It aims to develop technologies that protect the privacy of users as well as provide companies with tools to build their online businesses. This will basically make the currently running tracking systems obsolete, and block other tracking techniques as well. 

It aims to replace third-party cookies with an API system via cohorts. Using these APIs, you will be able to gather valuable information that will help you with conversions, ad targeting, remarketing, and best of all, personalized marketing, etc. 

Google’s Privacy Sandbox

First Party Data 

First-party data is the data that your company collects directly from the users, either through your website, social media, or any other source. In order t gather valid first party data, you can create and promote valuable content, newsletters, podcasts, and gated blogs and articles. This will help generate more signups and ultimately boost your pool of data.

You can then make use of the data like names, emails, addresses and other information to come up with personalized marketing campaigns like personalized emails, recommendations, etc. 

First Party Data 

Distributed ID Systems

Distributes ID systems allow you to safely transmit unique IDs of users like their email addresses. These ID systems also involve the more scalable types of IDs called probabilistic IDs. These IDs use browser data like the user’s IP address, device, URL, etc. to find the right match for user identification estimations.

Distributed ID Systems

Digital Fingerprints

A digital fingerprint is nothing but a unique digital identifier. A unique fingerprint is created for different users based on the device information gathered from their activities. This can be classified into two categories- browser fingerprinting and device fingerprinting. 

In simple words, when a user navigates through different websites or tabs on a web browser, fingerprinting helps collect all the information on these activities which can then be used for creating some value.

Digital Fingerprints

Zero Party Data

Zero party data is the data that users share at their own will. It doesn’t require any tracking or analyzing of user activities or behavior. 

For instance, if a customer fills out a feedback form, or takes part in a quiz or giveaway and provides information, all this falls under the category of zero party data. This is a rather simple way to collect valuable information, right? And the best part is, you can easily assess and utilize this information to scale up your personalized marketing efforts.

So, if you want to do the same, sign up for Outgrow’s free trial and create interactive tools like forms, quizzes, polls, assessments, etc. and collect all the data that you require. 

Zero Party Data

Contextual Targeting

Contextual advertising refers to the practice of placing ads on web pages in accordance with the content of those pages. So, majorly based on keyword analysis, it allows you to serve relevant ads that align with the content of a web page. It doesn’t rely on cookies for information, it rather utilizes the data that is shared by publishers including device type, timezone, etc. 

You can use contextual targeting effectively by creating as much value as possible for your users. For example, if you select a particular niche like online gaming and create unique content on the same, you’ll have a loyal audience in no time. 

Distributed ID Systems

How to Collect Zero Party Data With Outgrow

Outgrow is an interactive content building platform where you can create various types of interactive experiences like quizzes, calculators, polls, giveaways, forms, assessments, chatbots, etc. 

Outgrow

All these types of interactive experiences will allow you to ask questions, and gate your content with a signup form ultimately helping you in collecting all the relevant information that you need to implement your marketing strategy. 

You can either create your interactive content from scratch or even select a premade template and alter it as per your requirements. Check out Outgrow’s examples page and scan through their 1000+ industry-specific templates to find the most appropriate one for your business. 

Let’s see how you can create your own content on Outgrow!

Create Your Own Outgrow Content

1. Log in to the Outgrow dashboard. If you haven’t signed up already, do it ASAP!

2. Once you’re in, you can select the content type you want. You can choose from the following. 

Choose the following

3. Once you choose your content type, you can then choose a layout for your interactive experience. Outgrow offers 5 different types of design layouts including different column styles, paragraph styles, and chatbot styles. 

4. Once you have selected your preferred content type and suitable layout, you can start setting everything up like the welcome screen, questions, options, design elements like background image and color, button texts, other media like GIFs, videos, etc. 

Outgrow Bulider

4. Once everything is done, you can proceed to the result page. You can create relevant results and add some interesting images and videos along with them in order to make them look attractive. 

Result Page

5. Finally, once you’re satisfied with the look and feel of your content piece, you can click on Go Live and your content will be all set to get you some good data. 

Now, whenever someone interacts with your content, for example, takes a quiz that you’ve embedded on your webpage, all the information they provide will be gathered in the analytics

Starting from simple lead information like the names, email addresses, and contact details to the responses they submit to your quiz questions, everything will be systematically saved in your Outgrow account. 

You can then go through this information and create segments and run personalized retargeting campaigns!

Let’s take a look at a premade and understand how the data can be useful. 

Premade

This outcome quiz asks the users various questions like the shape of their face, their hairstyle, preferred beard style, etc., and provides them with an outcome suggesting the bearded look that will suit them best. 

So, if you’re someone who deals in men’s grooming products, you can utilize a quiz like this to collect information about the needs and preferences of your target audiences. Using this data, you can create product offerings that your audience will definitely buy!

Are You Ready for the Cookieless Future?

There you go! In this blog, we’ve discussed all about third-party cookies, their phaseout, how the cookieless future is going to impact businesses and the best part- some amazing, easy-to-use alternatives for third-party cookies. 

Cookiesless Future

We feel that the easiest and safest way to collect data is by directly asking for it, that is, zero party data. So, why don’t you try it out?

Sign up for Outgrow and create interactive experiences that help you collect important data, within minutes and without any coding experience. 

FAQs

Yes, third-party cookies are going away. Google announced the phaseout of cookies in February 2021 in light of making an attempt to provide a greater sense of security to its users. 

A cookieless world is going to have a huge impact on business and marketing operations for all the companies working digitally. Data tracking and collection will become difficult, making all the activities that follow difficult as well.

You can prepare for a cookieless future by adapting to some third-party alternatives. Zero party data is one of the best substitutes for third party data. You can collect some relevant zero party data by creating and distributing interactive experiences like forms, surveys, quizzes, etc.

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