The first-party data strategy has no alternative

In a study, the organization Werbungtreibende im Markenverband OWM analyzes regulatory and competitive developments from the perspective of advertisers in a cookie-free world. The study addresses the question of how digital advertising campaigns can be purchased, managed, optimized and measured across marketers, browsers, devices and sessions in the future.

According to the study, it is primarily the cross-publisher digital advertising campaigns that are affected by market developments, while all direct bookings with a publisher or platform are not affected or are only temporarily affected.

This is due to the fact that platforms mostly work with their own first-party data of high quality and coverage in sovereign-controlled systems, some of which require logins. This means that they are hardly affected by regulatory and technological changes.

The study participants were almost unanimous in their view that market developments will further strengthen the platforms in their market position. The open market, on the other hand, must succeed in repositioning itself. Today, it is dependent to a relevant extent on advertising revenues based on third-party cookies and equivalents.

According to OWN, various measures are necessary here. On the one hand, the focus should be on the company's own user and usage data, including a forced log-in strategy (publisher first-party data strategy). In addition, ID solutions should be implemented in order to become independent of third-party cookies and equivalents. Companies should also try to establish focused, cross-publisher ID solutions and standardizations in order to remain competitive with platforms. Last but not least, there should be a shift from traditional browser-based ("client") data communication to a server-based interface architecture in order to guard against further technological restrictions imposed by browser and operating system manufacturers.

For advertisers, it is therefore a matter of strategically deciding, as part of their own first-party data strategy, which ID solutions they will work with in the future to activate their own data for their own marketing activities.

"We know that the third-party cookie system is suboptimal: even now, only a third of users can even be reached via this due to ad blockers, browser tracking prevention and matching losses," says OWM CEO Arne Kirchem. "The decisive factor will be whether the market succeeds in creating alternative offers that can at least keep up with today's third-party cookie world, and ideally are better. The upcoming upheaval offers us the chance to completely renew the current system and we should take advantage of it! We must avoid a jungle of ID solutions that only cover certain areas or cleanroom silos, the penetration of which is only possible for advertisers with considerable technical and resource expenditure. OWM appeals to the market to create an ID solution that complies with data protection law, has a wide reach and is platform-independent. We offer our support here."

Christine Diener, Head of Digital at OWM, also urges people to use the time they have left: "While we have gained time with Google's announcement that it will not block third-party cookies in the Chrome browser until 2023, this only has value if the time is used. We know that our members have already started building first party data. They have also set up strategies or developed tools to be able to run campaign optimization under future changing conditions. We recommend that our members continue to push these developments strongly and think that the recommendations for action from the study can provide valuable impetus."

On behalf of OWM Joachim Schneidmadl of JS Consulting & Equity has been awarded a Study was carried out. The study involved extensive market research and the evaluation of expert questionnaires from companies in the digital marketing, advertising technology and ID solutions sectors.

The results of the study will be discussed at the OWM panel at DMEXCO 2021 at 12:40 p.m. Wednesday.