For The Drum’s Data & Privacy Deep Dive, Rhys Jackson of agency RocketMill argues that one longstanding dream of digital marketers – a total view of customers across channels – is illusory.
Regardless of whether Google’s deprecation of the third-party cookie will be (further) delayed or not, privacy legislation is here to stay. For once it’s the marketing industry that’s failing to keep up.
For years, digital advertising has sold the promise of connecting every touchpoint across the customer journey to deliver hyper-targeted advertising that eliminates wastage in your media budget. In today’s privacy landscape, this couldn’t be further from the truth, but it’s also nothing for marketers to shy away from.
A privacy-centric experience
Digital measurement of marketing performance is increasingly fragmented. Regulations like GDPR around the world have helped ensure that customer data is collected with explicit consent and used for limited purposes only. Major web browsers such as Safari, Firefox and Brave have now limited the lifetime of cookies (both third-party and first-party), restricting fingerprinting, redacting cross-domain information and stripping URL tracking parameters. Apple devices require prior consent to access the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA). The list goes on and is ever-expanding. It’s clear to anyone paying attention that the direction of travel is firmly toward a more private digital experience.
A more secure, private online experience is undeniably a positive thing, despite the frustrating endless cookie banners. So why might marketers be concerned with these changes? Simply put, almost all digital advertising and analytics technologies today rely on one key concept: persistent identifiers. A persistent identifier is something that allows a data collector, such as Google, to repeatedly identify an individual, device or household when they interact with a website or mobile app. These identifiers allow an ad network to build…
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