<h2><em class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">The challenges</em></h2><p><br></p><p><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">Marketers are being tested by three big changes that the new data privacy policies enable:</span></p><p><br></p><ul><li><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">Once consumers started scattering their activities across different devices (laptops, smartphones, tablets, and so on), </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">cross-channel multi-touch attribution</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> seemed to be the solution to the difficult task of recreating </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">customer journeys</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> that are fragmented. Now, these new limitations make this task even harder.</span></li></ul><p><br></p><ul><li><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">The term </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">data granularity</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> was coined to refer to the amount of detail datasets obtained mostly from </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">third-party cookies</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">. More granularity enables marketers to make decisions regarding their strategies with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of their customers. In a time when we expect companies to speak to us in a personalized manner, we are losing the main source of data that helped us tailor interactions to a certain segment’s needs and hopes.</span></li></ul><p><br></p><ul><li><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">Third-party cookie</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> sources that have been easily accessible for most of our careers will no longer be there for us to rely on. Without them, we will have to create entirely new models of consumer information collection, storage and analysis that will probably be more expensive, time consuming and overall more difficult.&nbsp;</span></li></ul><h2><br></h2><h2><em class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">Adapting</em></h2><p><br></p><p><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">Luckily–from a human rights perspective–the data privacy issue has caught the attention of the general public (or at least the one that uses the internet the most). Third-party cookies have been put under scrutiny in such a way that it led Google to decide to eliminate them in a gradual manner starting in 2022. Also, we now have the possibility to choose if we want to give sites access to our data, or even customize which data we don’t mind sharing and which is sensitive to us.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">This doesn’t mean that we have to give up hope and start looking for another job, but it rather means that the ones who get ahead of the game will occupy the big seats in the industry and lead the transformation process, probably getting the best clients along the way. Below, we’ll go over some of the ways we’re making up for the lack of third-party cookies, which were a holy grail up until last year.</span></p><p><br></p><ul><li><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">Building </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">trust</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> and </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">loyalty</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> is more important than ever before: if we want to keep getting customer data for strategizing purposes, our audience has to fully trust our brand, our company and our ethos. </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">High-quality content </strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">will always speak to your audience and help them associate your brand with trustworthiness and commitment to them, leading them to come back again and again and keep up with your brand’s journey.</span></li></ul><p><br></p><ul><li><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">Given that third-party data is off the table, we should start focusing on </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">first-party</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> and </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">zero-party cookies</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">: these are the ones either obtained directly from the consumer via the brand’s website or, what’s even more desirable, the ones that the consumer provides directly. Through </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">newsletters</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">, </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">surveys</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> and </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">content downloads and access</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> we are able to have a little </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">exchange</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">: providing audiences with high-quality, valuable content and asking for some </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">data</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> in return.</span></li></ul><p><br></p><ul><li><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">Making the shift from behavioral to </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">contextual targeting</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> can seem daunting, but results won’t necessarily be impacted negatively. Before the rise of contextual ads, behavioral tracking followed the browsing history of an IP address to impact it with a message; now, AI tools scan sites to figure out their </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">content</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> via keywords, speech, imagery and geolocation in real time to display ads that are relevant to the user’s action in the moment. One could argue that context is more relevant than past actions, and with the right tuning one could reach really specific segments with seamlessly personalized messages. Also, at this point in time, contextual ads are up to 50% less expressive than traditional, IP-tracked targeting.</span></li></ul><p><br></p><ul><li><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">Social listening</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> can complement other </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">market research</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> techniques: focus groups, surveys, interviews, experiments and field trials, observation, and comparative analysis are all methods we can–and should–use more often, as they make for a more integral approach that tackles the subject from different perspectives. Investing in alternative procedures will pay off in the form of useful insights and also make us marketers put into practice our scientific approach, which creates added value for clients and, ultimately, for customers.</span></li></ul><p><br></p><ul><li><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">Focus on </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">personalization</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">: with this approach, we encourage addressing our audience by their</span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> first name</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> and being really specific about their </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">pain points</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">. Our market research should seek an in-depth understanding of all of them, even ones that we weren’t taking into account. The best way to convey how much we know about our area of expertise is for the public to identify themselves in the words, the terms and the scope of the problems we come to solve.&nbsp;</span></li></ul><p><br></p><ul><li><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">Data-driven decisions are the only ones to make: in order to have the highest-quality information for the whole company to use, we need to </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">collect, organize and standardize</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> it. Whenever and however an interaction happens, we should be able to record it, put it into a pre-existing category and then make it part of the bigger picture next to the whole dataset. Sometimes we could even consider transforming our presence in the virtual landscape into a </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">Digital Experience Platform</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> (</span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">DXP</strong><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">), which is “an integrated set of core technologies that support the composition, management, delivery, and optimization of contextualized digital experiences.” This could be a single product or a set of integrated applications. A DXP will improve the customer experience, streamline analytics for easier interpretation and use of the data, and </span><span class="ql-color-#000000">reduce the need for architecture since it works with</span><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> a headless structure. It is important to know in depth what the business needs are in order to choose the right DXP for it and its customers.</span></li></ul><p><br></p><h2><em class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">The Horizon</em></h2><p><br></p><p><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">Third-party cookies are not the </span><em class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">be-all and end-all</em><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;"> of marketing. We currently have many alternative ways to help clients achieve their goals. This doesn’t mean that we don’t have to shift our mentality, not only for ourselves as professionals but mainly to guide and lead our audience into a new era of internet targeting and data processing.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">These kinds of challenges tend to have a beneficial effect: they make us reconsider ways to connect with our audiences in such a way that they can see our ethical commitment to them. Whatever dialogue we are trying to encourage, our brand should inspire trust. Knowing our audience and how they feel most comfortable being addressed is more important than ever, and it creates an opportunity to get first-hand information that will nurture this virtuous circle of trust.&nbsp;</span></p><p><br></p><p><span class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">Data privacy was one of the main pending debts our industry had to our audiences and clients. </span><strong class="ql-color-#000000" style="background-color: transparent;">We owe it to them to maintain quality standards while also honoring ethical ones. We have been walking this path for 20+ years…would you like to walk it, too? Contact us!</strong></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>