Fuelling personalisation in the cookieless world

In the world of customer experience, personalisation is the key ingredient that separates great brands from mediocre ones. Customers are increasingly demanding personalised experiences, and businesses that fail to meet these expectations, risk losing them to competitors who do.

It is not easy, but as McKinsey found in 2021 – in ‘The Value of getting personalization right’:

·       71% of customers say personalisation is important to a great experience

·       76% of customers get frustrated when they don’t receive personalised experiences

·       26% of customers will actively look to switch brands when they are not delivered a personalised experience

However, businesses are facing a significant challenge when it comes to personalisation. Changes in the wider internet fabric are severely limiting our ability to provide personalised experiences. The data that we utilised to power of personalisation engines has been severely restricted:

·       Apple have now restricted in-app ‘cookies’ so that they are completely "sandboxed“, meaning that cookies remain private to each app and cannot be shared with another

·       And, the leading browsers of Firefox and Safari already block third-party cookies from their browsers with Chrome announcing their ambitions to follow suit by 2022, 2023, 2024.

As a result of these changes, businesses are losing visibility into their audiences, making it challenging to deliver personalised experiences. One solution to re-establish this visibility is to move away from third-party cookies and move to a first-party cookie that the business owns. This approach is durable, built for privacy and consent, and ensures that individuals, brands, and publishers have full control over their data.

To illustrate the impact of these changes, let's consider the example of a leading publisher who recently identified this issue. They saw a significant loss of visibility from their analytics solution to their third-party cookie and their DMP view of their audience. As the chart below shows, there was a monumental drop in visibility across iOS apps and the mobile browser as a percentage of their traffic across their sites.

Following the deployment of the AdFixus first-party ID platform, they were able to restore their visibility of this traffic and re-publish the valuable data back into their personalisation programs.
‍

‍

We believe that that macro changes around consent and privacy are all good things for the market. Giving the power back to the individuals and allowing them to decide and control how this utilised is a step in the right direction.

In conclusion, personalisation is critical for providing great customer experiences, but, changes in the wider internet fabric are making it more challenging than ever to deliver. Businesses that want to stay ahead of the game need to move away from third-party cookies and embrace first-party cookies built for privacy and consent. By doing so, they can ensure that they have the data they need to deliver personalised experiences and stay ahead of the competition.

‍