Let’s engage with the death of third-party cookies

By Vanessa Lyons
Published Mi3

The demise of the third-party cookie is an opportunity for advertisers.

For fifteen years we have used cookies to chase consumers around the internet because they happened to land on a website for a few seconds days before.

This isn’t a strategy that adds value to consumers or to the brands marketers are custodians of.

No wonder 32.8% of internet users worldwide report using an ad blocker and that some of the most common reasons people say they do is because “ads get in the way” and “ads are irrelevant”.

As an industry we should turn our minds to what advertising is and the effect it should be having in our marketing strategies.

Advertising is a value exchange.

A brand provides a consumer with value (entertainment, experience, information) in order to receive attention and engagement.

The more engagement an ad receives, the greater effect it will have on metrics like awareness, brand uplift and purchase intent.

And when readers are engaged they can discover something they may not otherwise have looked for or considered – which can drive reappraisal, disrupt consideration sets and fast track buying decisions.

It’s time to get back to connecting with consumers in ways that suit them and in ways that provide them with value. It’s time to focus on engagement.

I’m looking forward to a boost in creativity coming out of advertising and media agencies as smart people step up to this new reality.

I predict a renaissance in ad agency creative departments, and a much greater focus on media that helps drive engagement rather than cheap impressions.

As the voice for the news publishing industry, ThinkNewsBrands is excited because different media types have wildly different effects on ad engagement.

Our research shows that consumers find contextual ads in news publishing to be less disruptive, more relevant and more engaging than all other high reach channels including TV, social media, search, radio and non-news websites.