How to Achieve Post-Cookie Marketing Success

At a recent Masterclassing event, QueryClick’s CEO Chris Liversidge gave retail marketers a run-down on achieving marketing success in a post-cookie digital economy. If you didn’t catch the event, not to worry, we’ve got a round-up of Chris’ top-tips for effective post-cookie attribution below.

Chris is the CEO and Founder of QueryClick and has been working with enterprise businesses to drive ROI since 2008. He has almost two decades of experience building and optimising websites, and is a regular author and speaker on performance marketing.

Let’s start with the basics; what’s happening with 3rd party data and should marketers care?

The current model has 3rd party providers collecting and aggregating data from websites, apps and platforms. This is then packaged and sold to marketers to understand and target their audience.

This has long been the accepted way of things for digital marketers. However, some recent changes have come along to shake things up.

Google announced that they will be removing 3rd party cookies from Chrome browsers by the end of 2023 and Apple’s iOS 14.5 update has made sharing this data opt-in only for every app use. This means that a vast amount of the data that has been available to marketers up until this point will be less accessible.

These changes to 3rd party data come off the back of:

• rising concerns around data privacy
• compliance questions around GDPR
• and the rise of ad-blocking software among younger internet users.

How does this fit in with the wider marketing landscape?

The death of the 3rd party pixel, as it has become known, comes alongside other issues in the marketing mix.

The siloing of AdTech is a major obstacle for marketers, with certain companies dominating in this space – Facebook, Google, and Adobe to name a few. This monopoly has contributed to retailers reaching a point of saturation in digital marketing spend across channels.

Given how much marketing spend is allocated to these AdTech companies, it’s imperative that the data used in making these spend decisions is accurate. Only then can marketers make smarter Paid Media strategies to help bring down costs and drive incremental ROI.

So what does this mean for digital marketers?

It may surprise some digital marketers to realise that there are some major problems around 3rd party data use.

There is a compelling study undertaken by MarTech which shows that targeting data does not actually improve marketing performance unless you pay a significant premium.

This premium is to the tune of 2.5 x the cost of display ads or 1.6 x the cost of videos ads before you gain improvement in performance using 3rd party data.

This tells us that the cookie is not fit for function, with targeted ads actually performing worse than untargeted ads from an ROI perspective.

At QueryClick, we undertook a study of the accuracy of cookie-led data. When the raw data was inspected, we found that 80% of it represents partial or incomplete data about the actual activities being performed.

The challenge here is that most attribution solutions, such as Google and Adobe, rely on flawed attribution models like last-click data. In these models, conversions are attributed in their entirety to the ‘last click’ a customer made before purchase, failing to take into account the complex nature of how users come to the final stage in their purchasing journey.

So, moving away from 3rd party data has its benefits?

Absolutely. There is an opportunity here to really challenge marketing spend on prospecting and retargeting and find a solution that better serves you. Looking at analytics systems that use predictive modelling rather than cookies-based systems will bring a lot of value.

At QueryClick we have a proprietary solution, Corvidae, that uses predictive analytics to fill the 1st-party gap. Our approach to attribution uses advanced AI to generate a contribution value for every interaction.

We use multi-channel modelling and patented “session-stitching” to ensure marketers truly understand the value of each channel in their customer conversion journeys, empowering them to make better marketing spend decisions.

Get in touch with our experts today and find out how Corvidae can help you achieve marketing success in a cookieless world.