By Solera AutoPoint

March 31, 2021

Europe led the way with passage of the GDPR Privacy laws on 14 April 2016, which became enforceable beginning in May of 2018.  Google, Facebook and Apple have and are making similar changes. Safari removed cookies in 2017, Firefox in 2019 and Google’s Chrome,  which accounts for 60% of all browsing activity, is looking to do the same in the next year or two (they are being vague on timing, as usual).  When you pair this with the changes in Apple’s latest iOs 14 update, advertisers are looking at big changes to how and who they can target online. 

Let’s start at the beginning, what is a cookie and how does it work? Cookies allow websites to log your activity, and third-party cookies give that permission to sites other than the ones you’re on.

‍Cookies are text files stored in your web browser that store an identifier to anonymously track your internet usage data. These cookies help determine what ads you see, help personalize website experiences to you, and help deliver analytics back to advertisers, so they know who saw their ads and whether or not someone took an action as a result.

Cookies are going away. This gives the Big 3 a huge advantage in the ever evolving digital world. Amazon, Google and Apple already account for 70% of online ad spend and this change will only increase their hegemony.

Why?  The Login/1^st Party Data Advantage: If you use Gmail, chances are that you stay logged into your account as you surf the web.  Or, if you’re logged into Facebook or Instagram while you go about your day online, then neither Google or Facebook will need to rely on a cookie to ensure you see the right ad, because you’re logged into their platform and the ads and experiences are happening within their domain, so they can track it themselves.

That’s what makes it  1^st party data, data that they have collected on their platform, hence it can be used to target ads to you, when you are on their platform(s).

As a result of the new Cookie-less World that we will be living in the very near future, 1^st Party Data is going to become a very hot commodity for advertisers and knowing how to effectively utilize that data on key platforms will be the new “Mad Men.”

Stay tuned for our next post where we will discuss key strategies for the usage of 1^st Party data.