Ensuring personalisation in a cookieless world

The internet is decades old, but many of its fundamental aspects remain the same. It's a collection of networks that constantly communicate with each other to create a more extensive worldwide web. Over time, instead of a ticking broadband modem, we now have high-speed fibre-optic broadband that allows for faster data transfer. One fundamental aspect of the internet, embedded in all that data being transferred, has shaped a lot of how we engage with brands - cookies.

A cookie is a small file that gets stored on your computer and keeps a note of your browsing history or behaviour. From saving your browsing preferences to recording your taste in books, it can do everything. This small functionality completely changed how we use the internet as it enabled developers and by extension brands to know their customers better.

How the cookie crumbles

Cookies were a eureka moment for marketing and advertising teams. Instead of relying on mass-marketing tools like outdoor hoardings and televisions, marketers could now understand their customers' needs at an individual level and directly address them. In this digital age, businesses that have an edge over personalisation win the long-term game and cookies enable automation like never before.

However, cookies have been getting a bad name because advertising companies share user metadata with each other for better targeting. These are specifically called third-party cookies (a tracker on websites created by a company other than the website owner) and ad networks depend on them the most. However, with the world gravitating toward securing user identity and data and complying with evolving privacy regulations, companies are now exploring safer methods of ad personalisation, with many exploring cookieless tracking as a solution.

Personalisation minus the privacy concerns

Over the last few years, brands have realised that privacy is sacrosanct and any data leakage can be detrimental to long-term audience acquisition, growth, and retention. Customers, in turn, expect companies to be more transparent about their data collection practices and cut down on third-party sharing - all the while expecting relevant and personalised communications and experiences. While this challenges the current status quo of the marketing and advertising industry, it also offers an opportunity to those who can think outside the box.

Apple and Firefox have already blocked third-party cookies, and Google plans to follow suit soon. What this means is the metadata collected by the cookie shall remain between you (the user) and the website. There's no third-party sharing, helping build a stronger one-to-one relationship.

Research from the Winterberry Group and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) shows that spending on first-party tracking is rising. More than half of the respondents have already adjusted their budgeting to accommodate the change. comScore says that 55% of cookies today are overstated, and 35% fail to figure out demographics accurately.

Since browsers are now clamping down on cookies, brands will find it difficult to track unknown visitors on their digital properties including websites, in turn, reducing their ability to deliver a personalised experience and target ads. Hence it is becoming important for brands to recalibrate their customer acquisition strategy and prioritise quality permission-based first-party collection to be able to provide customers with most relevant personalised experiences using information customers choose to share.

How is Adobe pioneering a cookie-less future

Adobe Real-time Customer Data Platform (CDP) is industry’s first CDP architected for first party data. It acts as a centralised hub for first-party data, and helps build a customer's profile over time. The platform is connected with Adobe Target, a tool that ingests information and makes it easier to orchestrate personalise experiences across the customer journey.

As the name suggests, it works in real-time. Adobe CDP steadily monitors user behavior, leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to trigger registration or consent from them at the right time.

It is also able to incorporate collaboration between brands to expand first party data sets without compromising sensitive user information. Thanks to ‘Segment Match’ - an innovation unveiled at Adobe Summit 2021, an apparel retailer can now team up with a jewellery brand to strategically target customers and offer an in-sync experience. Unlike the current norm, one visit to a clothing e-store won't bombard you with ads from a hundred other sellers.

Similarly, businesses can utilise ‘Look-Alike Segments’ to grab customers with similar interests or attributes. It helps create a new database for marketers that can be synced along with Segment Match to give a more detailed outlook. Adobe also launched a B2B edition that lets businesses enter the B2C segment directly. Market insights are the most difficult to find, and this is the massive gap Adobe intends to fill.

What does the future hold?

Cookies have been an integral part of the internet and we’re not entirely getting rid of them, just finding a middle ground where both personalisation and privacy are achieved.

Early adopters have the maximum lead, and with privacy and ethics gaining centre stage, marketers need to revisit their strategies. Privacy is no longer a privilege, but a fundamental right that’s now extended to everyone on the internet. And the companies that understand this sooner, shall excel faster.


To know more about Adobe’s vision to equip businesses in a cookieless world, watch this session at Adobe Summit 2021 on demand now.

DISCLAIMER: This article is in partnership with Adobe.