If you haven’t had a chance to watch “The Cookie is Crumbling. Are you Ready?” virtual event that we presented in partnership with Advertising Week, you can take a look here to learn about the impact of Google’s impending deprecation of the third-party cookie, and the opportunity it presents for brands, agencies, and publishers to invest in new approaches to understand audiences, value advertising, and measure results.
The webinar speakers included Taylor Bentley – Senior Programmatic Media Manager at PMG, Justin Scarborough – Senior Director, Programmatic at PMG, Joseph McKenna – Head of Programmatic, UK and WW at m/SIX, Rohini Sen – Head of Insights at Quantcast, and Ruth Mortimer – Managing Director, Global Education and Development at Advertising Week. These speakers offered their perspectives on why the shift to cookieless environments is an opportunity for innovation and growth. They also explored several innovative solutions that operate in cookieless environments today.
With more than 1,200 registered attendees, the event included a lively discussion and many insightful comments and questions. Here are the top questions and answers we think could most benefit you:
How do you partner with advertisers to test your cookieless capabilities?
Dozens of Quantcast customers are currently using our cookieless solution and we will apply the learnings to your needs, to help you both now and in the future. We are working as partners with clients to build a solution that is future-proofed for 2023 and can achieve scale and performance without third-party cookies.
The process of testing our cookieless capabilities begins by understanding a client’s campaign objectives and setup, so we can accurately measure performance. We recommend a budget that aligns with your appetite for variability and willingness to experiment. Throughout the process, we share results to ensure we are aligned on performance, and any learnings or optimization recommendations. Our roadmap is informed by client feedback and requirements.
Will the demise of cookies lead to a huge uptake in contextual solutions?
We are testing and innovating new contextual solutions, with the caveat that we do not expect it to be a “like for like” replacement. We do foresee that clients will be interested in exploring contextual solutions as well as cookieless solutions. At this time, direct relations with publishers are a bigger priority.
How is personalization in messaging going to be affected by these changes? Do you expect customers to notice a difference in how they are reached?
The move to a cookieless environment will reduce personalization somewhat, but that may not necessarily result in a worse experience for consumers. Marketers will need to focus on what kinds of creative to build and where to execute, which is a different approach to personalization.
How do Quantcast cookieless solutions take into account consent?
The Quantcast Platform looks for consent attached with a bid request (implicit or explicit, based on regulation for the region) before using and processing any of the information in the bid request.
How can I use cookieless capabilities today?
Cookieless capabilities are available today for all Quantcast Platform users. If you are not using the platform, please fill out the form on our website. If you are, please contact your account executive or account manager.
If I activate cookieless, will it serve exclusively on inventory without third-party cookies?
By default, enabling cookieless activation on the Quantcast Platform expands the reach of your campaign to inventory without third-party cookies, in addition to serving on inventory with cookies. In other words, you will continue to serve on inventory with cookies, but are adding cookieless inventory to expand your reach and potential audiences. It is also possible to serve exclusively on inventory without cookies, as requested by the client.
Brand safety and suitability
How are your contextual tools guarding against disinformation and brand safety?
Ara™ TopicMap, the custom-built contextual technology within the Quantcast Platform, analyzes content from billions of URLs and uses machine learning in real time to build a multi-dimensional, highly expressive topic map of the open internet, an accurate picture of online content and context.
You can learn more about how Ara TopicMap works by watching this webinar. The Quantcast Platform includes proprietary brand safety technology that runs across all of your campaigns.
You talked about brand safety. How about brand suitability? How do you address that within your platform?
Ara TopicMap allows you to reach audiences based on predefined interests or a custom list of words or phrases to reach relevant audiences. This, coupled with our 1P data, consent signals, and the rest of our interoperable approach have shown clear brand suitability proof in our cookieless results!
Walled gardens
What data are you leveraging to power your audience modeling capabilities in comparison to walled gardens?
With Quantcast, you can achieve effectiveness and scale comparable to walled gardens. Quantcast Measure is an audience insights and analytics tool that gives us a unique first-party view of the open internet, with over 100M+ web and mobile destinations tagged, including data from premier publishers like Forbes and BuzzFeed.
What are your thoughts on Google’s recent announcement about retiring FLoC and introducing Topics?
FLoC didn’t fly in its early tests, so this shift from Google doesn’t come as a surprise. We know that structuring data around topics with contextual signals is a workable solution. However, a consumer-first approach will require a consent-forward solution. So while there’s no silver bullet for privacy, this pivot unfortunately still seems to serve the interests of just one walled browser, and doesn’t account for the needs of consumers or the open internet.
First-party data
How would you advise CPG clients, who traditionally do not have a lot of first-party data (given that they rely on retailers to sell their products)?
With the Quantcast Platform and our multi-signal approach across precise addressability and contextual, CPG clients can streamline the best of both worlds to measure and reach their campaign objectives. Our team can work with you to discuss the best approach for your company. Please fill out the form on our website to contact us.
IDFA consent is low – how do you handle that?
Apple’s recent changes to the IDFA identifier have resulted in lower consent rates across mobile applications, which may impact marketers’ ability to reach consumers and measure effectively. However, Quantcast has minimal inventory across mobile applications; therefore, IDFA consent rates have minimal impact on the Quantcast Platform.
Results
For m/SIX, what kind of results are your clients seeing now?
Joseph McKenna, head of Programmatic at m/SIX, affirms that a car manufacturer was able to double the conversions in cookieless environments with Quantcast. They also achieved 7x cost efficiency in cookieless environments compared to cookie-based environments, thanks to a significantly lower cost per thousand (CPM). Read this blog post to find out more.
Are insights available for cookieless campaigns? If so, what types are available?
Yes, you can review the impact of cookieless activation and get actionable insights with campaign delivery metrics arounds areas such as spend, impressions, uniques, clicks, and conversions in environments with and without third-party cookies.
How do Quantcast’s clients verify results in a probabilistic world?
We are integrating our measurement solutions with client and agency internal solutions (MTA, MMM, brand lift, etc.) in order to verify results and also optimize performance.
Wrap-up
The advertising landscape on the open internet is changing rapidly as the technology of the past starts to crumble. Google may have called extra time on the demise of the third-party cookie, but marketers and agencies should plan for the future now.
Quantcast published a perspectives guide titled “In a World Without Third-Party Cookies,” which addresses several major trends and identifies solutions for the future. You can read it here.
To learn more about how to gain a competitive edge today and future-proof your business with Quantcast cookieless capabilities starting now, visit our cookieless solutions page.
If you’re ready to get started with cookieless campaign testing, click here. You can also contact us to learn more.