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Tag: marketers

  • Weekend Digital Media Round- How Meta Premium Is Redefining The Creator Economy, Why AI visibility GEO and AEO aare the future of marketing, Is The Mega Era Cooling As Micro Influence Heats Up? & More….

    Weekend Digital Media Round- How Meta Premium Is Redefining The Creator Economy, Why AI visibility GEO and AEO aare the future of marketing, Is The Mega Era Cooling As Micro Influence Heats Up? & More….

    1.How Meta Premium Is Redefining The Creator Economy 

    Meta’s new premium tools—ranging from advanced analytics to AI-assisted creation—are giving creators a significant capability advantage, shifting the ecosystem toward professionalisation. While reach isn’t paywalled, those who invest in premium features can optimise faster, plan smarter and engage audiences more strategically. The creator economy is increasingly splitting into casual users and performance‑driven creators who treat content like a structured media business. [Source: Marketing Mind]

    2. Why AI visibility GEO and AEO aare the future of marketing

    AI is reshaping how people search, making brand visibility in AI‑generated results essential for staying competitive. Companies must shift from traditional SEO to strategies like AI visibility, GEO, and AEO by creating clearer, authoritative, question‑focused content. Early adopters will gain trust and influence, while those who delay risk losing relevance and revenue. [Source: Fast Company]

    3. Is The Mega Era Cooling As Micro Influence Heats Up?

    Influencer marketing in India is shifting from follower-heavy mega creators to micro and regional creators who offer stronger trust, engagement, and conversions. Brands are adopting hybrid strategies—using mega influencers for visibility and micro creators for measurable, community-led impact. The ecosystem isn’t declining but evolving into a more data‑driven, multi‑tiered model focused on audience quality and accountability. [Source: Marketing Mind]

    4. What’s behind Netflix’s CTV market share jump?

    Influencer marketing in India is shifting from follower-heavy mega creators to micro and regional influencers who offer stronger trust, engagement, and measurable conversions. Brands are adopting hybrid models—using mega influencers for visibility while relying on micro creators for credible, community-driven impact. The ecosystem isn’t declining but evolving into a multi-tier, performance-focused structure. [Source: DigiDay]

    5. Why Brands That Still Run Ads Are Losing to Brands That Tell Stories

    Modern brands are losing effectiveness with traditional ads because audiences now connect more deeply with emotional, story‑driven content. To earn attention, brands must behave like media creators—building narratives, characters and entertainment people choose to spend time with. In an era of content overload and AI acceleration, skilled storytelling has become the true competitive advantage. [Source: Entrepreneur]

    6. How AI Is Helping Marketers Understand Human Buyer Psychology

    AI is giving marketers a deeper understanding of real human buyer psychology, moving beyond surface-level data to insights about identity, emotion, and behavior. By using AI models trained on a brand’s own research, teams can interact with lifelike customer personas, improve messaging, and make more empathetic, psychologically aligned decisions. Brands that embrace this human-centered AI approach are better positioned to build loyalty and consistency. [Source: Forbes]

    7. Where Senior Leaders Are Struggling with AI Adoption, According to Research

    Senior leaders are facing pressure as AI moves from small pilots to influencing everyday decisions, workflows, and client delivery. Many struggle with managing large-scale change and proving measurable impact while AI rapidly embeds across their organizations. [Source: HBR]

    8. The Rundown: Why YouTube has become key for brand GEO strategies

    YouTube has become a major source for LLM-generated answers, often cited more than Reddit, pushing brands to optimize their video content and transcripts for AI visibility. Marketers are now treating YouTube scripts, metadata, and creator partnerships as strategic SEO tools to influence how LLMs portray their products. Longer, information-dense videos with well‑structured language are proving especially effective. [Source: DigiDay]

    9. AI Is Now Marketing’s Gatekeeper: How Brands Can Influence And Leverage

    AI is increasingly becoming the gatekeeper for brand discovery—deciding which creators, publishers, and companies get surfaced and trusted. The article highlights that while AI boosts efficiency and discovery, consumers still crave human authenticity, making real creators and credible publishers more important than ever. Marketers winning today blend AI‑driven insights with genuine human influence to build authority and trust. [Source: Forbes]

    10. Turning AI-Powered Creativity Into Lasting Impact

    AI is reshaping marketing by enabling faster creative production, but most ads still fail to capture enough attention to make an impact. The “Creative AI Loop” framework urges marketers to pair human intuition with AI-driven prediction and real‑world feedback to continually improve results. Without this feedback loop, increased production speed can lead to more wasted content rather than better performance. [Source: AdWeek]

  • Weekend Digital Media Round- Google Launches Ads Advisor & Analytics Advisor Globally, Getting Human-driven, AI-assisted Marketing Right, Leading with Logic and Instinct: The Dual-Compass for Every Leader & More….

    Weekend Digital Media Round- Google Launches Ads Advisor & Analytics Advisor Globally, Getting Human-driven, AI-assisted Marketing Right, Leading with Logic and Instinct: The Dual-Compass for Every Leader & More….

    1.Google Launches Ads Advisor & Analytics Advisor Globally

    Google is rolling out Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor, two AI-powered tools built on Gemini, to all English-language Google Ads and Analytics accounts starting early December. Ads Advisor provides optimization recommendations and can apply approved changes, while Analytics Advisor offers conversational insights, visualizations, and growth opportunities through key-driver analysis. [Source:  Search Engine Journal]

    2. Getting Human-driven, AI-assisted Marketing Right

    Marketing is undergoing a major transformation as AI reshapes creativity, discovery, and brand authenticity. The emerging approach combines human insight with AI assistance, emphasizing owned media channels, trust-building, and iterative strategies like “loop marketing.” HubSpot advocates for human-driven, AI-assisted content to enhance personalization and long-term audience value. [Source: AD Week]

    3. Leading with Logic and Instinct: The Dual-Compass for Every Leader

    Leadership in today’s world requires balancing two “compasses”: logic and intuition. Logic provides data-driven clarity and strategic alignment, while intuition enables bold decisions, empathy, and adaptability in uncertainty. The most effective leaders integrate both to navigate complexity and foster trust. [Source: Brand Wagon]

    4. How To Prepare Your Brand For Agentic AI Commerce

    Agentic AI is revolutionizing e-commerce by enabling personalized shopping experiences, automated decision-making, and frictionless purchasing through AI-powered assistants. To stay competitive, brands should focus on structured data, API integration, AI-driven content optimization, accessibility, and secure payment systems. [Source: Forbes]

    5. Marketers Still Love Awareness — and It’s Costing Them

    Marketers often overinvest in awareness, mistaking visibility for value, which leads to wasted budgets and poor ROI. Modern strategies emphasize activation—measurable actions like acquisition, retention, and revenue—over exposure, replacing outdated models like AIDA with performance-driven frameworks that tie marketing spend directly to business outcomes. [Source: CMS Wire]

    6. Future of Marketing Briefing: The agentic turn inside programmatic advertising

    Agentic AI is rapidly reshaping programmatic advertising, with three new standards emerging in less than a month: Ad Context Protocol, User Context Protocol, and the Agentic RTB Framework. This shift signals a major acceleration in AI-driven automation for ad auctions and targeting. [Source: DigiDay]

    7. AI in B2B: ‘The market’s confused implementation with innovation’

    Most B2B companies are misusing AI by focusing on efficiency rather than transforming customer experience, leading to disconnected and inconsistent journeys. Research shows leadership misalignment, talent gaps, and organizational silos are major barriers, while true innovation requires unified data, customer-first strategies, and shifting AI budgets toward CX for long-term growth. [Source: The Drum]

    8. Beyond deals, inclusive design is shaping India’s festive e-commerce

    Inclusive design is reshaping India’s festive e-commerce by making online shopping accessible and culturally relevant. Brands are adopting multilingual interfaces, adaptive layouts, and AI-driven personalization to ensure every user—regardless of language or ability—feels welcome and engaged during peak festive seasons. [MediaBrief]

    9. Which Is Broken: Your CDP or Your Customer Data Management?

    Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) often fail to deliver promised benefits for mid-sized businesses, amplifying existing data and resource issues instead of solving them. Success depends on strong data governance and infrastructure, which most firms lack, making CDPs an expensive distraction unless preceded by multi-year data readiness efforts. [Source: CMS Wire]

    10. How to measure your AI search brand visibility and prove business impact

    Brand visibility in AI search is becoming the key metric for SEO, replacing traditional rankings. The article explains how to calculate a Brand Visibility Score, benchmark competitors, and track sentiment to prove business impact, offering a three-step framework and tools for monitoring and improving visibility across AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. [Source: Search Engine Land]

  • Weekend Digital Media Round-Up The $1 Trillion E-Commerce Gap: Why Brands Are Losing Loyal Customers In The Last Mile, How enterprise AI is quietly rewriting brand-building in India, From Mobile To Living Room: How CTV Is Reshaping India’s Advertising Landscape & More…

    Weekend Digital Media Round-Up The $1 Trillion E-Commerce Gap: Why Brands Are Losing Loyal Customers In The Last Mile, How enterprise AI is quietly rewriting brand-building in India, From Mobile To Living Room: How CTV Is Reshaping India’s Advertising Landscape & More…

    1.The $1 Trillion E-Commerce Gap: Why Brands Are Losing Loyal Customers In The Last Mile

    Brands are losing over $1 trillion annually due to poor post-purchase experiences, especially in the last mile of delivery. While front-end e-commerce is optimized, gaps in shipping, communication, and returns are eroding customer loyalty and retention. Leading brands now treat logistics as a core part of customer experience, using branded tracking, proactive support, and seamless returns to build trust and drive repeat business. [Source: Forbes]

    2. How enterprise AI is quietly rewriting brand-building in India

    Enterprise AI is transforming brand-building in India by integrating generative AI into backend systems, enabling real-time personalization, predictive modeling, and dynamic campaign optimization. This shift is redefining marketing from a one-way broadcast to a continuous, data-driven loop, with brands investing in intelligent infrastructure to drive long-term value and measurable ROI. [Source: PitchoNet]

    3. From Mobile To Living Room: How CTV Is Reshaping India’s Advertising Landscape

    Connected TV (CTV) is rapidly transforming India’s advertising landscape, shifting focus from mobile to smart TVs. At IAMAI’s CLICK 2025, industry leaders highlighted how CTV blends digital precision with the emotional impact of television, offering deeper engagement, measurable ROI, and innovative formats like shoppable ads. [Source: Marketing Mind]

    4. Why do marketers ditch the very assets that make their brands famous?

    Marketers are increasingly abandoning iconic brand assets like mascots and logos in favor of minimalist rebrands, often at the cost of brand recognition and loyalty. The article highlights Cracker Barrel’s failed attempt to modernize by removing its long-standing mascot, sparking backlash—even from public figures. [Source: The Drum]

    5. How AI and automation are changing our driving experience

    AI and automation are revolutionizing driving by enhancing vehicle safety, streamlining accident response, and transforming claims and repair processes. As cars become more complex and connected, the industry is investing heavily in technology to ensure faster recovery, improved transparency, and safer journeys. [Source: World Economic Forum]

    6. Voice of the Customer Needs a Reset: Enter AI

    Traditional Voice of Customer (VoC) programs are failing due to survey fatigue, delayed feedback, and lack of emotional context. AI offers a transformative solution by enabling real-time sentiment analysis, predictive insights, and personalized feedback, turning VoC into a proactive and strategic tool. Organizations that adopt AI early gain a competitive edge by anticipating customer needs and enhancing experience continuously. [Source: CMS Wire]

    7. 100 Most Used AI Apps in 2025 : What’s Trending and What’s Not

    AI apps in 2025 are transforming daily life, with top trends including emotional companionship platforms, creative coding tools, and productivity enhancers. Big tech and Chinese innovators are driving global influence, while the ecosystem stabilizes around established players like ChatGPT and Midjourney. [Source: Geeky Gadgets]

    8. Rethink Reach to Unify Your Linear and Streaming Advertising Strategies

    Marketers are shifting from measuring raw impressions to evaluating reach as a performance metric that drives engagement and revenue. By unifying data across linear TV and streaming, advertisers can avoid duplication, uncover missed audiences, and optimize campaigns—potentially unlocking \$141 billion in lost revenue annually. [Source: Adweek]

    9. A Week In The Life Of An AI-Augmented Designer

    UX designer Kate experiments with integrating AI into a week-long design sprint, using tools like ChatGPT and Figma Make to accelerate tasks from research synthesis to prototyping. While AI boosts speed and creativity, Kate learns that critical thinking, empathy, and human judgment remain essential to meaningful design. [Source: Smashing Magazine]

    1o. From Efficiency To Emotion: How Brands Are Using AI To Scale Creativity

    AI is transforming digital advertising by enabling brands to create personalized, scalable content across formats and languages while maintaining emotional resonance. Industry leaders at CLICK 2025 emphasized that while AI boosts efficiency and experimentation, human judgment remains essential for authenticity, relevance, and storytelling impact. [Source: Marketing Mind]

  • Weekend Digital Media Round-Up Unlocking AI Traffic Insights: Create a Custom Channel in GA4 to Stay Ahead, Making your peace with zero-click searches, Digital Audio Is Effective Across the Funnel—Here’s How to Measure Its ROI & More…

    Weekend Digital Media Round-Up Unlocking AI Traffic Insights: Create a Custom Channel in GA4 to Stay Ahead, Making your peace with zero-click searches, Digital Audio Is Effective Across the Funnel—Here’s How to Measure Its ROI & More…

    1.Unlocking AI Traffic Insights: Create a Custom Channel in GA4 to Stay Ahead

    ​AI-driven traffic from tools like ChatGPT and Gemini is often misclassified in Google Analytics 4, leading to skewed SEO data and missed insights. By setting up a custom channel in GA4 to track this traffic separately, marketers can better understand user behavior and optimize strategies accordingly. [Source: DigiTrendz]

    2. Making your peace with zero-click searches

    SEO is evolving in response to the rise of zero-click searches, driven by AI Overviews and answer boxes that provide users with information directly on search pages. While traditional click throughs are declining, marketers can still build brand visibility and trust by focusing on earned media, authoritative mentions, and optimizing for AI-driven discovery. [Source: Marketing Tech News]

    3. Digital Audio Is Effective Across the Funnel—Here’s How to Measure Its ROI

    Digital audio is proving to be a powerful, measurable tool for advertisers, offering personalized, on-demand experiences that outperform traditional media in attention and engagement. With advanced targeting, real-time analytics, and publisher-level insights, it drives results across the marketing funnel—from awareness to sales. [Source: AdWeek]

    4. AI Can’t Run Your Marketing on Autopilot

    AI tools can streamline marketing tasks, but over-reliance can dilute brand identity and waste resources. Success lies in using AI to enhance—not replace—human creativity and strategic thinking. [Source: DigiTrendz]

    5. Building Brand Identity: How To Define Who You Are

    Brand identity is the foundation of a successful business strategy, guiding everything from marketing to product development. Mordy Oberstein emphasizes that authentic identity—rooted in meaningful reflection and aligned actions—helps brands connect deeply with their audience and avoid chasing trends that don’t fit. [Source: Search Engine Journal]

    6. Don’t Be Fooled by ‘Big, Bad Data’—Marketing Insights Drive Better Consumer Experiences

    Marketing data service providers help brands deliver personalized experiences by ethically collecting and analyzing consumer data, improving both marketing efficiency and customer satisfaction. While concerns about privacy persist, regulations like the CCPA empower consumers to control their data, ensuring transparency and responsible use. [Source: AdWeek]

    7. Future-proofing ad spend: How marketers can combat the rise of AI-powered ad fraud

    Marketers face rising threats from AI-powered ad fraud, especially during high-investment festive seasons. To protect ROI and brand trust, experts recommend a layered defense strategy involving pre-bid filtering, post-bid verification, and continuous threat intelligence. [Source: Storyboard 18]

    8. Structured vs unstructured citations for local SEO

    Structured citations—like listings on Google Business Profile or Yelp—help establish a business’s legitimacy and visibility in local search results. Unstructured citations, such as mentions in blogs or social media, build authority and trust, and are increasingly important for AI-driven discovery in 2025. A strong local SEO strategy requires both types to maximize online presence and consumer engagement. [Source: Search Engine Land]

    9. World Wide Web Day 2025: Is India Ready for Web 4.0?

    India’s move toward Web 4.0—an AI-driven, decentralized digital ecosystem—faces hurdles like uneven Web 3.0 adoption, rural connectivity gaps, and low digital literacy. Experts emphasize that inclusive policies, public-private collaboration, and localized tech solutions are key to ensuring equitable digital progress. [Source: Entrepreneur India]

    10. Brands triple Q-comm ad spends as platforms turn full-funnel powerhouses

    Brands are rapidly increasing their ad spend on quick-commerce platforms like Zepto, Blinkit, and Swiggy Instamart, transforming them into full-funnel advertising ecosystems. These platforms now offer high-intent, performance-driven environments with real-time data and hyperlocal targeting, making them essential for FMCG and impulse-buy categories. [Source: Exchange4Media]

  • Strategizing for a Cookieless Future

    Strategizing for a Cookieless Future

    Cookies have been pivotal in digital advertising and marketing, yet rapid changes and heightened concerns over data privacy are ushering in new regulations. Moreover, the inevitable phase-out of cookies looms on the horizon; Google recently announced a delay in third-party cookie deprecation for Chrome until early 2025, affording advertisers more time to adapt seamlessly.

    In this post, we explore cutting-edge strategies and solutions for cookieless social media and Google advertising, ensuring compliance with evolving privacy standards.

     

    Audience targeting without cookies

    • Despite Google’s two postponements of cookie deprecation, advertisers are bracing for inevitable changes, grappling with uncertainty about the future of advertising without cookies.
    • To prepare for this shift, leveraging first-party data through retargeting and lookalike audiences emerges as a cornerstone strategy. While many advertisers currently rely on third-party data alongside first-party insights, the impending cookie phase-out necessitates exploration of alternative approaches
    • Google Topics API: This innovative solution categorizes websites based on user interests derived from browsing history. By selecting from a list of predefined topics, advertisers can deliver targeted ads while safeguarding user privacy with data stored locally on browsers.
    • Second-Party Data: Collaborative data exchange through partnerships or mergers offers fresh insights into audience segments. For example, a yoga app partnering with a sports retailer can merge user databases to refine targeting.
    • Social Media: Leveraging user-provided data on platforms allows precise segmentation based on demographics, behaviors, and geographic locations, facilitating tailored ad campaigns.
    • Contextual Advertising: By placing ads in relevant contexts, advertisers maintain effectiveness without compromising user privacy. Targeting based on interests, events, or seasonal trends enhances engagement.
    • Retargeting Strategies: Although more challenging without cookies, effective tools and data enable advertisers to reach desired audience segments with personalized ads, ensuring continued engagement.

     

    Google Ads without cookies

    As third-party cookies phase out, Google Ads faces a pivotal transformation towards a privacy-centric approach. Embracing first-party cookies through server-side tracking emerges as the straightforward solution.

    Emphasizing First-Party Data

    Google Ads is poised to pivot towards leveraging first-party data, enhancing conversion accuracy through innovative methodologies:

    • Enhanced Conversions: Integrating user-provided data—such as email, phone numbers, and names—directly into Google Ads amplifies targeting precision.
    • Offline Conversion Tracking: Utilizing data sourced from offline channels like CRMs and CMSs enriches insights, ensuring comprehensive campaign optimization.

    Privacy Sandbox Initiatives

    Google pioneers initiatives like Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) and Topics API:

    • FLoC: Groups users based on shared online behaviors, enabling targeted advertising without compromising individual identity.
    • Topics API: Assigns weekly topics to users, enabling contextual ad delivery tailored to user interests and behaviors.

    Contextual Targeting

    By harnessing contextual data, Google Ads serves ads aligned with web page content, ensuring relevance without cross-site tracking. This approach respects user privacy while optimizing ad effectiveness based on keywords, topics, and content themes.

    Social Media ads without cookies

    In the realm of digital advertising, social media stands resilient amidst the cookie apocalypse. Unlike other platforms, social media ads thrive without relying on cookies, thanks to robust tools and strategies:

    Platform Algorithms and User Data

    Social media platforms employ sophisticated algorithms to decipher user behavior patterns. Interactions such as likes, shares, and follows provide deep insights, enabling precise ad targeting tailored to user preferences.

    Voluntary User Data

    Users willingly furnish platforms with valuable data upon signup and throughout their usage journey. This includes demographic details like age, gender, location, and specific interests, empowering advertisers with rich insights for effective targeting.

    Contextual Advertising Power

    Utilizing contextual cues from viewed pages, social media delivers ads aligned with user interests without intrusive behavior tracking. This approach respects user privacy while ensuring relevance and engagement.

    Device and Browser Fingerprints

    Platforms leverage unique identifiers such as device characteristics and browser settings to refine ad targeting, maintaining effectiveness without relying on cookies.

    Social media’s adaptability to evolving data regulations underscores its capability to deliver targeted ads responsibly. Embracing Comprehensive API Integration (CAPI) types ensures compliance and enhances ad delivery efficacy in a cookieless landscape.

    Explore these cutting-edge tactics to elevate your social media advertising game:

    Server-Side Tagging Implementation

    Harness the power of server-side tagging across major platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and LinkedIn. These platforms support seamless integration with our designed tags, ensuring efficient data attribution from ad impressions to conversions on your website.

    Utilizing Offline-First Party Data

    Maximize campaign effectiveness by integrating offline-first party data. This approach captures conversions beyond online interactions, including in-store purchases, phone orders, and chat-based transactions. By tapping into comprehensive customer insights, you enhance targeting precision and optimize remarketing efforts.

    Custom Customer Data Platform (CDP) Development

    Unlock the potential of a tailored CDP without the complexity and cost traditionally associated with such platforms. Utilizing Google Tag Manager, build a customized CDP tailored to your specific needs. While technical proficiency is required, this solution empowers marketers to leverage data effectively without additional expenses.

    Cookies in affiliate marketing

    Cookies are fundamental in affiliate marketing, facilitating precise tracking of user activities and attributing conversions to affiliates. They capture vital data on user behavior, preferences, and interactions, empowering advertisers to refine strategies and enhance targeting.

    As the era of third-party cookies draws to a close, affiliate marketing must innovate alternative tracking and attribution methods:

    Server-Side Tracking

    Opt for server-side tracking over third-party cookies to ensure reliable attribution. Long-lived first-party cookies are pivotal, allowing affiliates to claim commissions for conversions over extended periods, unlike short-lived cookies that expire quickly, especially on browsers like Safari.

    Unique Affiliate Links

    Employ unique affiliate links or discount codes to accurately credit affiliates for sales, bypassing reliance on cookies. Each link serves as a distinct identifier, ensuring precise commission allocation.

    Fingerprinting

    Despite privacy considerations, fingerprinting amalgamates device, IP address, and browser data to create unique user identifiers. This method, while effective, requires careful navigation of regulatory landscapes.

    User Accounts

    Encourage users to create and log into accounts for persistent tracking of activities across sessions, mitigating reliance on cookies while maintaining tracking capabilities.

    Innovative approaches ensure affiliate marketing thrives amidst evolving privacy regulations, demonstrating resilience and adaptability beyond traditional cookie-based tracking methods.

    Retargeting campaigns without cookies

    Retargeting campaigns have long relied on cookies to deliver personalized ads to users who have interacted with specific webpages, driving valuable return visits to websites and apps. However, with impending changes in data privacy regulations, advertisers must adapt and implement innovative, privacy-conscious tracking methods for effective cookieless retargeting.

    Cutting-edge Solutions for Cookieless Retargeting:

    • Google’s Protected Audiences API: This technology facilitates on-device ad auctions, ensuring remarketing and custom audience targeting without relying on cross-site third-party tracking. By categorizing users into interest groups based on their onsite behavior, publishers can serve relevant ads from previously visited websites.
    • Meta Conversion API: By bypassing device-based tracking, this API enables direct event transmission from advertiser websites to Meta. This streamlined approach empowers advertisers to effectively retarget users on Meta platforms without the need for traditional cookies.
    • Innovative Ad Solutions: Advertisers are pioneering new cookieless ad solutions such as LiveRamp’s RampID, which offers global addressability while sidestepping reliance on third-party cookies, device IDs, or IP addresses.
    • First-party Cookie-based Retargeting: Leveraging first-party cookies remains a robust strategy in the cookieless landscape. Advertisers can optimize retargeting efforts by enhancing the value of first-party data, ensuring precise targeting across various platforms.

     

    Final thoughts: what digital marketers should consider

     As advertisers and marketers worldwide prepare for the impending cookieless future, one burning question remains: How can we effectively transition away from reliance on third-party cookies? With these cookies long powering online marketing and advertising strategies, the search for viable alternatives has intensified.

    Strategies for Seamlessly Embracing the Cookieless Era:

    • Embrace First-Party Data: Shift your focus towards harnessing first-party data over third-party alternatives. This approach allows for nuanced personalization and fosters deeper connections with your audience by leveraging insights from customer behaviors and purchase histories.
    • Adopt Server-Side Tracking: Emphasize server-side tracking solutions, which offer enhanced control over data transmission and management. Beyond navigating cookie deprecation, server-side tracking strengthens data protection efforts and enables the creation of privacy-compliant advertising tailored precisely to your audience.
    • Value Offline Conversions: Elevate the significance of offline conversions in your marketing strategy. Understanding and measuring campaign effectiveness through offline interactions provides invaluable first-party customer data. This holistic approach bridges the gap between online advertising efforts and offline sales, enriching audience insights and optimizing campaigns with privacy compliance in mind.

    Transitioning to server-side tracking presents a straightforward path to adapting to the evolving digital landscape post-cookie era while maximizing your data’s potential. For guidance on implementing cookie-free tracking solutions, reach out to us.

     

  • A Paradigm Shift in the Ad Industry: From Cookie-Based Remarketing to People-Based Targeting

    A Paradigm Shift in the Ad Industry: From Cookie-Based Remarketing to People-Based Targeting

    Just a few years ago, cookie-based remarketing was the biggest trend among marketers. It helped advertisers and marketers retarget customers effectively and helped to close the deal.

    However, the biggest problem with cookie-based ads is that they are getting increasingly irrelevant and ineffective, thanks to the popularity of mobile apps, and other walled networks like Facebook, Google, and Amazon.

    Studies report that over 66% of mobile devices that are in use don’t accept cookies. That presents a significant loss in traffic volumes. Additionally, today users access the internet across devices – smartphones, desktops, laptops, tablets and more. Apart from devices, they are also using different browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and others) for each device, making cookie-based ad targeting irrelevant.

    So, what does this mean for marketers?

    Cookie-based advertising is fading fast. This is where people-based targeting comes into the picture. As the name implies, people-based targeting helps you track an individual across devices, browsers, and apps.

    Here, let’s show you two significant initiatives that are currently being deployed for people-based targeting: the IAB Tech Lab’s DigiTrust and the Advertising ID Consortium.

    Though both these methods are different, they have a similar goal – avoid relying on cookies, and ultimately improve the speed and relevancy of ads.

    The Advertising ID Consortium: What it is and what does it do?

    The Advertising ID Consortium came into existence in 2017 and was initially founded by AppNexus, MediaMath, and LiveRamp. Initially, the project aimed to avoid the hassles of cookie syncing. However, now the mission of the project has extended to include the creation of a “people-based” identity that works across devices.

    LiveRamp is an identity resolution provider that has created a solution known as IdentityLink. This connects large datasets that contain information about millions of users to create an anonymous profile, based on a person’s interactions in the online and offline world.

    Right now, the Consortium focuses on just a few cookies, and the identifiers in these cookies are available to the exchange partners of the consortium. Participating companies can connect the identifiers and track a user across channels.

    DigiTrust from the IAB TechLab: What it is and what does it do?

    DigiTrust is a non-profit ad platform that is a part of the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) TechLab. While it participates with the Consortium, it uses its own ecosystem.

    It issues a cookie that can be read by participating organizations using the DigiTrust API. Additionally, this cookie can be issued by websites, thereby allowing the cookie to be considered as first-party. The DigiTrust cookie contains an identifier for the user, along with the user’s preferences and consent.

    DigiTrust states that it is 100% accurate in identifying a particular user. This rate is much higher than what is possible with cookie matching.

    Audience Reach

    Currently, nearly 50 platforms are participating in the DigiTrust initiative. On the other hand, the coverage of the Consortium is limited to a dozen ad platforms, right now.

    What does this mean for the future of ad retargeting?

    According to studies by Forbes and Forrester Research, people-based marketing is the future of digital ads. Instead, of targeting specific devices, the focus will be on targeting people across devices, browsers, and platforms. With the move away from cookie-based remarketing, marketers will be able to reach a person across platforms and devices.