It is all change for B2B advertising in 2024 with Google finally starting to switch off third party cookies. As a result, cookieless B2B advertising is coming into focus. How do you change your advertising strategy and tactics to handle this change?
Background
First some background. It isn’t all cookies that are being switched off. There are three types of cookies: first party, second party and third party. Only third party cookies are being removed.
First party cookies are generated by your own website and can only be accessed by your website. Some of the reasons they are used include keeping you logged in, tracking your preferences over time, measuring website performance.
Second party cookies technically do not exist. They are first party cookies that are then shared separately with a third party. So really this is defined as second party data. For example, a publisher collects first party cookies tracking your behaviour on their website. It then shares this data separately with another company that allows them to target ads more effectively, improve product recommendations, or analyse behaviour in more depth.
Third party cookies allow companies other than the website owner to collect information about the person visiting the website. This is then used to automatically improve targeting in advertising.
Since the user is not aware of this data sharing and can be identified individually, third party cookies are falling foul of privacy regulations and are being removed.
Implications of the 2024 third party cookie switch-off
With the majority of advertisers today using third party cookies to target display advertising, the impact feels significant. These are the major implications:
- Loss of precision in B2B advertising targeting: With third party cookies, you could select job titles and industries to allow you to target segments easily. These will no longer be based on third party cookies and instead will use other techniques discussed below, which are less precise.
- Increase in attention on first party data: While third party cookies are disappearing, first party cookies are still available and used to target advertising. We regularly advise all our clients to use first party data to power B2B advertising. This is a low cost, high ROI tactic that can drive pipeline. However, it alone cannot replace the removal of third party cookies as first party audiences only represent a small part of your target market. You still need a way to reach the rest of the market.
- Privacy-first approaches will drive innovation: We built the Radiate B2B platform with privacy in mind and do not use any third party cookies to deliver B2B advertising. The removal of third party cookies will drive new products and capabilities in the advertising space.
- Data Fragmentation: unfortunately we do not have homogenous data privacy laws across the globe and this means what is possible in one territory is not available in another. Across the UK and EU, any use of consumer data for advertising requires an opt-in. For B2B advertisers, this means that matching business profiles to consumer profiles is not possible, whereas in the US this is normal practice. As a result, understanding how the data was collected is important.
Options for Cookieless B2B Advertising
So, onto the options available to you.
- Contextual Advertising: This places adverts on pages where the content is likely to be a similar audience to your ideal customer profile. While these campaigns offer scale, it is in exchange for increased media wastage as you also reach many people who are outside your ideal customer profile. Read more about contextual targeting here.
- Company Targeted Advertising/Account Based Advertising: This identifies medium and large sized companies and places advertising when they browse publisher websites online. This allows you to tailor your targeting to just companies in your target market, your pipeline, or your customers. We take this approach further by combining contextual with company targeted advertising. This reaches only the types of people you care about as well as the companies inside your ideal customer profile, maximising your media spend. Learn more about our B2B advertising capabilities here.
- Firsty Party Audiences: Using your own first-party data like CRM data, offline purchase history, website behaviour and more allows advertisers to reach their existing audiences with advertising. We always recommend targeting these audiences, but as these audiences are small, other options are needed.
- Direct Publisher agreements: This places adverts on specific publishers you negotiate an agreement with allowing you to run advertising across the whole or a subset of their sites.
- LinkedIn Advertising: Assuming your audience actively uses LinkedIn, in a similar way to company targeted advertising above, you can place advertising in front of the right personas inside your ideal customer profile as well as broader industry or skills based targeting.
Conclusion
While the removal of third party cookies is a big event online, for B2B advertisers, cookieless B2B advertising is an option. All should be using first party data to reach audiences across display and LinkedIn. Alongside this, a mix of contextual and company targeted advertising to build brand awareness and engagement within your target market.
