The ability to rely on customer data is what allows digital marketing to outperform conventional marketing tactics. However, acquiring personal information from customers may no longer be an option, as Google’s goal to delete third-party cookies by 2023 ushers us into a cookieless future. Major advertising platforms, browsers, and tech firms have already begun to restrict the use of cookies to measure performance. Cookies will very soon be just a yummy treat for kids and adults and nothing more  (at least it seems like that). 

Why are Cookies Used to Track Digital Marketing Performance?

For years, cookies have been used to identify website visitors and track their online behaviour, both on-site and across several touchpoints with a business. It is made possible by the following sorts of cookies:

 First-party Cookies

These cookies assist digital marketers in identifying a person on a website and improving the user experience. First-party cookies are never sent to third-party services such as advertising platforms or networks; instead, they are only used by the site the user is visiting. 

Third-Party Cookies

These cookies are necessary for digital advertising since they collect information across several channels. It assists advertisers in determining which websites a user has recently visited and what they have done on those websites. Third-party cookies are created by domains other than the one the user is currently surfing and can be accessed on any website that loads the code from the third-party server.

First-party cookies and third-party cookies are technically the same types of files. The critical distinction is in how cookies are created and then used. While they both assist marketers in understanding consumers’ journeys and moving leads down the sales funnel, third-party cookies are more focused on cross-site tracking, retargeting, and ad-serving.

Why Do Businesses Need to Switch to Cookieless Tracking?

The majority of people relate the removal of third-party cookies to Google’s decision. While this is a contributing factor, it is critical to understand the underlying problem that prompted ad tech businesses and browsers to move toward a cookie-free future.

Cookies enable businesses to give an excellent on-site experience, customise offers for potential customers, start targeting and retargeting campaigns, and much more. The issue is that cookies can be utilised for illegal reasons just as quickly as digital advertising.

In recent years, many internet users have become victims of hackers or had their data hacked. As a result, customers are becoming increasingly worried about the privacy and security of their personal information.

Even though digital enterprises follow data privacy rules and are GDPR compliant, it has proven insufficient. As a result, major ad tech companies and browsers opted to phase out third-party cookies. Firefox was supposed to disable cookies in 2019, Safari in 2020, and Google Chrome in 2023.

Furthermore, the mobile operating system industry seeks to improve the user experience while also increasing customer privacy. For example, iOS 14.5 prohibits cross-app monitoring, preventing digital advertisers from measuring their performance without the user’s agreement.

Tracking cookies, it appears, will no longer be an option in a few years. Meanwhile, marketers are finding it difficult to move to alternative identification solutions right away. Moreover, half of them believe it will take more than a year to make a change.

 Also Read: 7 Steps In making a successful content marketing strategy