Three questions to help marketers prepare for the future "Identityscape"

Marketers across the globe are breathing a collective sigh of relief as Google pushes back the third-party cookie’s ultimate demise until 2023. But now is not the time for businesses to rest on their identity laurels. They still need to prepare for a future without the identifiers that currently play a vital role in measurement and creative personalisation, as well as underpinning the entire campaign lifecycle from onboarding and activation, to prospecting and retargeting.

Instead of demoting identity to the bottom of the priority list, marketers can use this grace period to ensure they are fully prepared for the future 'identityscape'. With the industry desperately searching for suitable cookie replacements ahead of Google’s original deadline, a wave of new identity solutions is already flooding the market. However, none provide sufficient scale and usability to replace cookies and mobile IDs as a universal standard, meaning marketers will ultimately be faced with a fragmented patchwork of solutions to deliver and optimise omnichannel campaigns.

The precision required from identity markers varies greatly by use case. At one end of the scale, marketers may just want to know that an ad is served to a unique user, without needing any more information. At the other, they may be onboarding offline to online prospects, and will need to know exactly who they are, with specific information such as email addresses. In addition, different identity markers will work in some parts of the digital ecosystem but not others. In this wildly fragmented identity space, marketers will need to stitch together disparate identifiers across every impression, click and conversion to gain a single view of the customer journey, and this process will take time.

Marketers need to formulate a game plan for the next two years. They need to assess their own individual business needs, understand where they are now and where they need to be, and explore the options available. Most importantly, they need to ensure they look for solutions where they can test without third-party cookies, and see what impact this has on their ability to target and measure digital campaigns. Here are three questions marketers should be asking themselves as they begin to prepare for the future 'identityscape'.
 

Question 1: How important is unbiased measurement & creative personalisation?

Some marketers may trust the reporting they receive from publishers or walled garden platforms, and simply won’t feel the need to verify the effectiveness of ad delivery. If this is the case, and they also don’t see personalisation as a high priority, their approach to the new identityscape will be relatively simple.  

However many marketers do value the ability to perform accurate reach, frequency and attribution analyses across the customer journey. They may already use advanced analytics for customer path analysis, multi-touch attribution and media mix modelling, and leverage verification data to filter out invalid traffic or non-viewable impressions. In addition, many will use personalisation techniques that currently rely on cookies such as re-messaging with personalised creative. For marketers that fall into this group, a comprehensive identity strategy is required.     
 

Question 2: Is there a plan in place to ensure consumer privacy?

Privacy is of course vital, and consumers need to know what is happening to their data. But with advertising supporting the free internet, marketers must also be able to measure the impact of their digital spend. Marketers need to take a position and determine their own ethical centre–how they are going to respect the rights of the consumer.

If marketers don’t already have a plan in place to ensure consumer privacy, now is the time to engage with identity and tech partners to understand how consumer privacy policies will be impacted and what the options are.
 

Question 3: Which identity strategy bucket does the company fall into?

There is no one-size fits all identity strategy for marketers to follow, and the choices they make will depend largely on a number of factors: Do they have an ecommerce function? Do they rely on retargeting? Do they need to analyse their reach?

Some larger ecommerce players are fortunate enough to own rich first-party data assets, as well as having a significant digital presence in which to interact with consumers. This group will be in a strong position in the new 'identityscape' and their focus will be on data orchestration; bringing together various data points and making them available for analysis, to help power their advertising campaigns and other marketing outreach. They will need to lay the infrastructure to both handle this first-party data in a privacy-compliant manner, and also adapt to a continually changing landscape.

For many other brands, their online presence, and access to first-party data will vary widely. Some businesses credit card companies, for example, own significant first-party data assets, but don’t have the means to connect that data and deploy it effectively across the customer experience. Others, such as CPG brands, may lack both data assets and a digital footprint.

Once brands recognise where they sit in the 'identityscape', they can then work out what type of partners they need to bring their marketing strategies to fruition. They may need to work with identity partners who can match their data with other datasets to understand and target their customer base effectively. Or they could partner with vendors who can help them deliver ad creative based on contextual or behavioural data, that doesn’t rely on third-party cookie-based targeting.

Brands should focus on building a network of partners with identifiers in areas of the digital ecosystem deemed most relevant to their business goals. While many marketers will understandably select a foundational identity partner, it is unlikely any single player will have the ability to connect identity across all touchpoints. Brands should also look for ways to build up their own first-party data assets before the 2023 deadline.     

Google’s latest announcement may feel like a reprieve, but it’s not a retraction, and preparations still need to be made for a world without third-party cookies. By starting their preparations now, and establishing a game plan for the next two years, businesses can transition to the new 'identityscape' with minimal disruption and still achieve their marketing goals.