A Cookieless World: Data Solutions for Growth

The third-party cookie, a cornerstone of digital marketing, has been stripped of its value in recent years. Despite Google Chrome delaying the sunset of third-party cookies until 2025, the reality is a new dawn is here and alternative solutions are in play and are still emerging.

In the Embracing the Cookieless Future podcast, Will Ullstein, commercial director, YouGov makes an observation on what he thinks will fill the gap left behind by third-party cookies. He says, “We’re going to see interoperability of different methods. Some solutions are going to be extremely precise and give you the guidance you need to get at the bullseye. Others slightly less precise (methods) will give you the reach you’re looking for. I strongly believe that there is no one solution that’s going to replace third-party cookies. It will be a range of different solutions working in harmony to deliver the business outcome.”

Since the beginning of this year, to facilitate testing, third-party cookies for 1% of Google Chrome users have been restricted. As testing continues, using YouGov Self-serve, our fully self-serviced research platform, we polled marketers in the UK to understand their preparedness for the post-cookie world.

Here’s what we found:

• 56% of UK marketers say they are not familiar with ad targeting methods beyond third-party cookies.
• 48% of UK marketers are not sure about how long their business will take to transition to a post-cookie world.

In a post-cookie world, clear measurement will become even more crucial and access to the right kind of actionable data becomes far more valuable. So, get your hands on customer data and insights that you can rely on.