Much has been written about what the next generation of targeting may look like and in light of the 2 year demise of the cookie on Google’s Chrome Browser, many are looking at how to start developing this now.
You will be hard pushed to find any truly negative articles about the move by Google and that alone may lead you to believe that there are solutions already being developed. Whether these solutions will offer the same scale and tracking capabilities as the cookie, we will have to wait and see. Either way it would be wise to start thinking about testing other methods of targeting now in order to be able to migrate seamlessly over the next two years.
Here are 3 steps I recommend you take:
- Build up your own first party data source. In order to truly track and understand your customers and prospects you are better off having a first party relationship with them. Third party data will not disappear so you will still be able to analyse and create segmented audiences on your data by matching through to trusted third party sources.
- Test alternative channels of brand engagement. Apps, TV, audio and Digital Out of Home do not rely on cookies so targeting your advertising across these channels will continue to generate brand awareness and feed that marketing funnel. There are some great specialist audience platforms with some robust audience segmentation that can mirror what you have been doing on web and feed directly into these channels.
- Start to explore contextual advertising. Targeting your audience around where they are, what they are looking at and when they are looking at it can all be done now. In many ways this is also a far more considerate and relevant way of advertising which can only enhance their brand experience.
As an independent audience targeting consultancy, Tobal is able to help with all of the above so message me now and we can start exploring how to combine intelligent targeting with the above strategies.