Navigating the New Era of Cookieless Advertising
The cookie apocalypse doesn't need to feel so chaotic. Dive into the new technologies and first-party data strategies that performance marketers are embracing.
John Lopus
Amit Erande
Anoo Lalchandani
January 31, 2024
10 minutes
The Conversions API is the foundation on which everything is built for performance on Meta […] If you have not set up the Conversion API, make this your number one priority.
Meta
2023 Industry Report
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in Partnership with Deloitte
Similar to pixel-based conversions, ad platforms use these signals to optimize campaigns, (e.g., shift more budget to users like those who purchased) and improve attribution, (e.g., of users who clicked an ad and then purchased). However, sending conversions to CAPIs ensures this data transfer is handled securely, efficiently, and with control. This addresses the privacy concerns related to cross-site tracking pixels while providing ad platforms with better signals. AI capabilities then leverage these enhanced signals for optimization, resulting in more effective ad campaigns and insights.
The server-side transfer of conversions to CAPIs
Data Clean Rooms
Data Clean Rooms have emerged as a secure and effective solution for multiple organizations to collaborate on customer data without compromising privacy. Clean Rooms enable brands to perform complex analyses like cross-site attribution, which previously relied on DMPs and now ineffective device IDs or third-party trackers. This allows brands and advertisers to process and analyze first-party customer data in a secure, shared environment without exposing individual customer details.
Data Clean Room basics
Hosted clean room technologies like AWS Clean Rooms enable two parties to securely share their data before deriving insights from the matched users. Ad platforms are also releasing their own clean room technologies like Amazon Marketing Cloud, where advertisers can upload their own first-party audiences and conversion events to drive campaign and user insights from the data within the ad platforms themselves. By matching their first-party data to the vast amount of data within walled gardens, advertisers unlock insights like the percentage of customers who searched for specific products or saw certain ads across Amazon properties. These insights can then drive new product development and targeting strategies.
The Emerging Role of the Data Warehouse in Advertising
With the need to collect and store more first-party customer data than ever before, enterprises across industries are turning to Cloud Data Warehouses like Snowflake, BigQuery, and Databricks. More than just a storage solution, these platforms offer scalability, security, and powerful computing capabilities, making them ideal for handling extensive first-party data repositories. From customer events and user identifiers to campaign performance and product inventory–all of the valuable data across a business, cloud providers like Snowflake continue to release powerful new features that make it easier than ever to ingest and centrally store data in a data warehouse.
Centralizing all data in the Data Warehouse
With organizations on the path to data centralization in their data warehouse, they are often already sitting on a gold mine of first-party data. Advertising and marketing teams can then simply turn to warehouse-native Data Activation platforms like Hightouch to activate this gold mine of first-party data OUT to the many tools and advertising platforms where it is needed. These purpose-built products like Hightouch make activation use cases like conversion events to Conversion APIs and audience syncs to Ad Platforms or Data Clean Rooms easier and more efficient than ever before.
Activating data directly from the warehouse
Leading advertising teams, including Warner Music Group, AXS, and Weight Watchers, trust this new Composable CDP architecture to power their first-party data use cases. It allows organizations to collect, store, and model their data centrally (in the data warehouse) while enabling marketers to activate their entire data repository out to the many tools where it’s needed.
Marketer-friendly tools like Hightouch Customer Studio make audience activation seamless
Closing Thoughts
We are at the cusp of some significant changes in the digital advertising world. To comply with user privacy requirements while still achieving maximum campaign performance, marketers must become proficient in first-party data and privacy-focused techniques. As mentioned in this post, first-party audiences, Conversion APIs, and Data Clean Rooms will be the fundamental building blocks of large-scale digital advertising in the cookieless era.
The best way to integrate with each of these is through the adoption of the Composable CDP, which offers modular, purpose-built capabilities such as Event Collection, Identity Resolution, Audience Building, and Data Onboarding.
If you're already transitioning to these new methods or are considering doing so, we invite you to meet with our team to learn about how Hightouch can accelerate your transition today.
