In preparation for the cookieless future, marketers are homing in on first-party data to target consumers. Worldwide, 36% of marketing professionals expect that customer purchase history will be their most valuable source of data once third-party cookies are gone. Meanwhile, 32% see social media profiles as key, and 31% plan to rely on website registrations.

Last year brought many surprises for the ad tech industry, along with important learnings about industry growth, the need for interoperable identity solutions, and preparing for a cookieless future.

Today, marketers have to juggle third-party cookie loss and new data privacy legislation, impacting their ability to identify customers and create a strong data foundation

Despite uncertainty stemming from ongoing challenges in identity resolution, programmatic display ad spending is steadily taking on an ever-greater share of total US digital display ad spending.

From the growth of TikTok and of social commerce to the challenges of brand safety and the cookieless future, 2021 will be another year of big stories for social media.

IAC’s Dotdash acquires Meredith in a $2.7 billion deal: The move demonstrates that publishers see value in building deep verticalized content brands, hastened by the demise of the third-party cookie.

The latter type of offering will be affected by the identity crisis—ID resolution is necessary for retailers to recognize users across other properties, and that will have to be cookieless in the future. Digiday has reported, for example, that Amazon is working on a cookieless identifier for Amazon DSP to use to continue targeting Amazon users as they browse other sites. Recommendations.

Google, Meta find themselves in Europe’s regulatory crosshairs once more: As increased scrutiny drives up the cost of doing business, Big Tech tries to fight back.

When it comes to building awareness, the solution to cookieless media and growth beyond search and social has been sitting in everyone’s living room all along. TV can be an efficient part of your media mix, and for a lower spend than many are accustomed to. At Tatari, we’ve worked with many brands that found success upon integrating TV into the marketing mix.

Brands eagerly jump on the retail media network bandwagon: As access to customer data becomes a priority for brands, retailers see an opportunity to diversify their revenue streams.

Adapting to a cookieless future. Leveraging the first-party data of complimentary brands is an effective counter to the loss of targeting resulting from Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) and the deprecation of the third-party cookie. Breaking the consumer trust barrier.

On today's episode, we discuss Google's recent announcement not to build alternative user-level identifiers or support them in their ad stack. How does this change the upcoming cookieless landscape, how does FloC fit in, and how might these changes affect consumer privacy? We then talk about whether The Trade Desk's investments may help it better compete with Google, Facebook lifting its political ad ban, engagement with misinformation on social media, and what to make of The Walt Disney Co.'s new ad exchange. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Nicole Perrin.

As we transition to a cookieless world, creativity is becoming more important than ever. People-based creative personalization such as dynamic creative and dynamic product ads (DPA) are the north star in how we deliver quality individualized experiences. Finite targeting doesn’t need to come at the cost of poor creative. Creative innovation equals greater impact.

Google's Chrome wasn't the first browser to put the kibosh on third-party cookies. Phil Acton, country manager for the UK, Benelux, and France at end-to-end programmatic platform Adform, joins eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Nicole Perrin to discuss how the company has been testing cookieless targeting with publishers in Europe, where Apple's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox have significant market share, as well as the importance of supply path optimization (SPO).

eMarketer was pleased to moderate a Tech-Talk Webinar featuring Exponea (acquired by Bloomreach)'s Martin Simo, product marketing manager. He discussed how brand marketers can take decisive action and develop a successful data strategy in a post-cookie world.

Today’s consumers find positive brand experiences more influential than advertising. Now more than ever before, marketers must forge the right relationships to make the identifiable consumer connections necessary to compete in a cookieless world.

However, several companies have proposed cookieless solutions that aim to keep the internet open while respecting consumer privacy. The Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) is an open-source ID framework built from hashed and encrypted email addresses.

“I don’t know if marketers are quite yet ready for the cookieless world, since they’ve been preoccupied with getting their lead generation back after COVID-19,” Linton said. “Paid media has been a key part of that recovery, but when the cookieless world begins, you won’t be able to track that spend as well.”

According to July 2020 research by Advertiser Perceptions, 65% of US marketers and agencies surveyed thought campaign reporting and insights would be among the most challenging phases of ad campaigns in a cookieless environment.

The survey also found advertisers expect a number of measurement and research techniques to become more important in a cookieless world, including sales-lift research, ad effectiveness research, and media mix modeling.

The email address is the most common form of personal information that web publishers collect from users and can be used as the basis of a cookieless identifier (e.g., a hashed email). Many publishers already employ authentication strategies, but they’ll become even more prevalent to enable user-level targeting on publisher sites in a cookieless future.

The rise of CTV has meant only more digital time spent in cookieless environments.