Where publishers look beyond the cookie | WARC | The Feed

Where publishers look beyond the cookie

Publishers are exploring solutions to ad targeting as the widely-used, if deeply flawed, cookie is phased out of web browsers’ plans – there is an important opportunity to right some long-standing imbalances.

Why it matters

The decline of cookie-based advertising presents an opportunity for serious change to publishers’ relationship with an advertising ecosystem that has drawn power and money away from them, but they will need to balance whether to partner with data integration partners that will help take their direct relationships to market or to go it alone like the largest publishers.

Takeaways

• While Google’s FLoCs are an early and influential leader in the post-cookie conversation, they are by no means a done deal and some publishers see an opportunity to disrupt the hegemony.
• Publishers hold the most valuable elements of advertising: the content users want to look at and a first-party relationship with them. The question is whether they can avoid creating walled gardens that will impede investment.
• Individual-level targeting is far from perfect, and has in some cases been shown to be less accurate than random guessing; other sources of information can inform smart buys and foment better advertising. Now is a time of change.