Cookieless tracking: How marketers can navigate a privacy-first web
Learn about cookieless tracking, the benefits, and how marketers can leverage first-party data to deliver highly personalized experiences.
With the future of third-party cookies uncertain, marketers who have relied on them for personalizing ads and other outreach may still have some time to use them, but their use will likely be more limited and controlled. This shift means marketers need to find new ways to engage with customers, and privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) are an emerging option.
A recent Deloitte report, sponsored by Meta, positions PETs as the next big thing in marketing and advertising technology. And Gartner says 60% of large organizations will use at least one privacy enhancing computing technique in analytics, business intelligence and/or cloud computing by 2025.
Privacy-enhancing technologies have actually been around since the 1980s, but they’ve only recently come into the news due to rising consumer concerns over the handling of their online browsing histories, increasing privacy regulations, Apple’s heightened iOS privacy measures, and the uncertainty surrounding Google’s plans for third-party cookies.
Google’s timeline for phasing out third party cookies has shifted multiple times, but it now appears those plans may have been completely abandoned.
What are privacy-enhancing technologies?
Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) are a combination of tools and methods designed to allow organizations to collect, aggregate, and analyze data while protecting individual privacy. With uncertainty surrounding third-party cookies and growing consumer concerns about online privacy, PETs have gained prominence as a crucial solution for maintaining data-driven insights without compromising user trust.
PETs enable brands to anonymize first-party customer data, ensuring individual identities are concealed, while still gleaning insights into consumer behavior. Following are five types privacy-enhancing technologies available today:
- Encryption: Sensitive data is turned into a secret code that only authorized users can decipher.
- Anonymization: Personal information is digitally disguised so nobody can connect it to an individual or organization.
- Differential privacy: A controlled level of digital “noise” or “randomness” is added to the data to keep personal details hidden while still providing accurate overall insights.
- Homomorphic encryption: Sensitive data is put into a digital locked box that can be operated by others without them needing to unlock it so the information remains private.
- Synthetic data: A life-like digital twin of the data that can be used for analysis without revealing any personal specifics.
Privacy-enhancing technologies can help brands deliver personalized campaigns without losing the trust of their audiences or running afoul of privacy laws.
“PET lets brands not only ensure buyers and sellers are more protected, but completely rethink how they use data and tools in more private ways as well,” says Rich Sobel, CEO of Marcato Solutions, a marketing and advertising consultancy. “There’s definitely a keep-your-nose-clean compliance component to it.”
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PETs at work: Examples of ad alternatives
Apple, Google and Facebook have rolled out privacy solutions that incorporate PETs.
Apple SKAdNetwork (SKAN): Apple has the second-largest ad network for mobile user acquisition, so it makes sense that it would have a privacy-focused framework that allows mobile app advertisers to measure the success of their campaigns without directly accessing the personal data of users. SKAdNetwork aims to balance effective advertising with user privacy within the iOS ecosystem.
Google Privacy Sandbox: One of the reasons cited for Google’s delay in deprecating cookies is that it’s taking time to cross technical and regulatory hurdles for delivering alternative tools for advertisers. Google is working to achieve this through The Privacy Sandbox Initiative.
Meta Conversions API: The Conversions API offers a direct connection between marketing data and the systems that help optimize ad targeting, decrease cost-per-result, and measure outcomes across the Facebook social network. This theoretically gets rid of the kinds of browser-based tracking that drove privacy advocates crazy and provides more reliable and secure ad performance measurement.
One data privacy expert noted that all these systems are closed, walled-garden solutions. While they provide assurance that consumer privacy is protected, brands lose data control and visibility.
Data clean rooms are another option. Gartner predicts 80% of marketers with media budgets of more than $1 billion will adopt DCRs as early as this year. Think of them as controlled and secure software environments where different parties, such as advertisers and publishers, can collaborate and share data while maintaining strict privacy safeguards.
Real customers, engaged with your brand: Enter data authentication
In a cookieless future, data authentication is key to creating customer relationships and understanding the intent of collected data in downstream systems.
Marketing in the age of privacy
Aside from the PETs hype, many marketers are preparing for the end of third-party cookies by focusing on a first-party data governance strategy that allows them to create a consent-based approach to personalization.
Marketing teams can leverage customer identity and access management software to provide customers with a trusted platform for authenticating and logging into applications. This trusted connectivity enables brands to deliver relevant, personalized experiences and build customer loyalty.
Brands can also give users power over their own preferences and consent, and embed those user-defined preferences into their profile to ensure compliance and trust.
