Third-Party Cookie Phase-Out: What Marketers Need to Know

Posted on November 17, 2021November 17, 2021 by Mindstream Media Group

Cookies are an essential part of internet usage, allowing websites to remember you and provide a more personalized experience. This browser-based technology can be used to identify a device or a specific user. Although primarily designed to streamline a user’s web experience, cookies also play an integral role in digital marketing. Tracking activity across the web like websites frequently visited, interests shown and purchases made gives marketers insight into consumer behaviors that can be used to build robust visitor profiles to improve ad targeting relevancy.

Cookies were never really meant to do as much work or contain and share as much information as they currently do. As a result, consumers have grown increasingly concerned about the privacy of their personal information and are demanding greater transparency, choice and control over how their data is used. This has become a driving force behind major players like Apple, Mozilla and Google modifying their support of the tracking technology, creating a need for digital advertisers to adapt with innovative solutions that do not rely on cookies.

But not all cookies are going away. First-party cookies will remain (at least for now). Potentially troubling third-party cookies are what will soon become obsolete. There is no reprieve. It’s coming and is unavoidable. The technology that provides the foundation for online marketing as we know it today will cease. So, what exactly does that mean for the advertising industry and your brand’s digital campaigns?

First-Party Cookies vs. Third-Party Cookies

Let’s start with a quick refresher on the difference between first-party cookies and third-party cookies. A first-party cookie is code generated by the website being used. In general, these are considered safe and allow the site to gather basic analytics about the user’s visit(s). The data is limited to the user’s behavior on that website; their activity on other websites not affiliated with that domain is not shared.

Third-party cookies are placed by another website that is not the website the user is browsing (hence the name third-party). These cookies track a visitor’s activity as they browse the web collecting information like sites visited and even potentially contact information like name, email address, street address and phone number.

This data is used to help understand a user’s interests, preferences and traits allowing brands to target more effectively based on that information. Third-party cookies also enhance attribution capabilities by providing a more holistic view of what goes into a conversion which facilitates campaign optimization.

Data Privacy Concerns

Until recently, most users didn’t realize they were being tracked by third parties and the depth of information collected. In an effort to promote data privacy, major browsers either already are or will soon significantly limit both the persistence and utilization of third-party cookies.

A series of laws and government regulations designed to protect user information have evolved over time as well. The two most significant policies worldwide are the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). GDPR was designed to protect the personal information of users in the European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) while CCPA gives consumers in California more control over the personal information a business collects about them. Voters recently approved Proposition 24, the California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act (CPRA). It amends key elements of the CCPA and will replace it effective 2023.

As a result, some companies have chosen to implement permission-based third-party cookies, while others have begun to phase them out completely and are seeking new solutions. Regardless, third-party cookies are living on borrowed time challenging marketers to find an alternative that balances consumer privacy and personalization.

Third-Party Cookie Phase-Out

Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox already block all third-party cookie tracking on their browsers. Although Google has now postponed removing support of third-party cookies on Chrome, the three-month phase-out period is expected to be complete by late 2023.

As of Q2 2020, the top three desktop web browsers, Chrome, Safari and Firefox held 68.3 percent, 9.3 percent and 8.9 percent of the market share respectively. In terms of mobile browser traffic, Chrome held 61.9 percent and Safari held 26.9 percent of the market share as of June 2020. Consequently, Chrome’s removal of third-party cookies will have the strongest impact on the advertising industry to date.

Then there’s the mobile app world where IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) is used to track user behavior. This randomly generated and generally anonymous identifier enables addressable advertising and conversion tracking online. Apple dealt a crushing blow to this technology with its iOS 14.5 launch in April 2021 by disabling it by default. Originally scheduled to go into effect with the release of iOS 14 in September 2020, the delay gave partners a brief reprieve. However, users are now required to opt-in before apps can collect and share data using the device identifier. Despite an ad campaign in defense of the personalization enabled by this tracking, Facebook was forced to comply and request permission to track user activity beyond the app.

Since the iOS 14.5 release, users can configure data privacy settings with one tap.

Advertising Implications

So, what does this mean for your brand’s digital advertising campaigns? It’s an end to current cookie-based targeting and measurement across the digital ecosystem that provides insight into which channels, creative, messages and placements deliver the best ROI. Although the loss of third-party cookies doesn’t mean this ability is gone forever, it does make tracking and performance measurement more challenging.

It’s important to note the change will have a limited impact on advertising within large platforms like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Pinterest. These walled gardens where users log in to accounts and accept detailed terms and conditions around data usage can still collect data from users and easily advertise within their own domain without much restriction. However, once a visitor navigates off these platforms, standard privacy restrictions apply.

A Replacement for Third-Party Cookies

Discussions are underway among various industry bodies such as the IAB and key stakeholders to develop new technical standards and guidelines. Although independent ad tech firms are working feverishly to develop their own solutions, all eyes are on Google for a new standardized replacement.

Google has, in fact, has been working on an alternative solution called the Privacy Sandbox that would curtail improper tracking while continuing to allow ad targeting within the Chrome browser. It seeks to strike a balance between personalization and privacy by anonymously aggregating user information and keeping more of it on the device itself rather than storing it in the cloud. As a Google Premier Partner, Mindstream Media Group has access to resources to keep us on top of developments like this that will impact our clients’ current and future campaigns.

Source: Google

Apple has a solution as well that was actually released in 2018 and is now experiencing increased adoption since iOS 14.5. The SKAdNetwork, or simply “ad network API,” is an integration between advertising platforms and Apple’s App Store that attributes mobile app installations and post-install activity to advertising campaigns in a privacy-compliant manner. However, it comes with its own challenges – namely, it aggregates users and is not delivered in real-time, complicating attribution and optimization.

Facebook has released an updated version of the Facebook SDK to provide support for Apple’s SKAdNetwork API. However, because of its heavy dependence on app advertising, these changes have had a significant impact on Facebook’s Audience Network.

Targeting Alternatives

Although third-party cookies have become a pillar for behavioral targeting, it’s important to remember that is just one targeting option. Viable alternatives include the following:

Focus on first-party data.

Leverage your brand’s customer data platform (CDP) to get to know who your customers really are and target them directly. Because the data collected is more personalized than third-party cookies, this option can generate even better sales and conversions.

Establish a direct partnership with publishers.

“As third-party data disappears with cookies and GDPR compliance, publisher audience knowledge is now being seen as a viable data source for segmentation and targeting and deeper insights in audience and brand engagement,” says Damon Reeve, CEO at The Ozone Project.

Optimize retargeting and owned media.

Upload your own contact list to a platform such as a social media network or search engine to enable targeting to those contacts or a mirror audience that shares similar demographics. Owned media, such as websites and social platforms, should also be strengthened to engage visitors tapped through retargeting efforts.

Utilize contextual targeting.

Contextual methods that reach consumers at key moments of research and inspiration will not be affected since they broadly target device type, brand, operating system or mobile carrier. This option also provides control over the type of content the ad will run adjacent to such as Health, News or Sports and includes parameters for geography and time of day.

The ability to track, measure and target across sites, screens and channels is imperative to crafting efficient and effective media strategies. Although a radical shift, the phase-out of third-party cookies could open the door to entirely new methods we have yet to imagine and create a more engaging, fraud-limited environment.

We view this change as an opportunity to reach an audience that chooses to see our clients’ ads by the nature of opting-in to tracking within apps they find valuable and trustworthy. The publishers and apps we partner with can distribute – and limit – content, features and ads based on an individual’s opt-in settings, involving the user in an unprecedented tracking relationship, a deeper level of trust and an enhanced online advertising experience.

Now more than ever, agile marketing strategies are a must. Connect with us to learn how we can Fast-Forward Your Business and deliver meaningful progress on your goals amidst the continual evolution of digital media.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in February 2021 and has been updated for freshness and accuracy.

[Case Study]: Omni-Channel Digital Campaign Drives 19% Increase in Sales

Posted on August 31, 2021September 9, 2021 by Mindstream Media Group

Bonchon Chicken, a South Korean-based international fried chicken restaurant franchise, struggled with a lack of brand awareness but enjoyed an almost cult following among food enthusiasts with their crispy fried chicken wings and unique flavors. They needed a media partner that could help them not only gain awareness and new customers but drive online orders while indoor dining was restricted due the pandemic. It was also critical that the strategy be scalable to accommodate the anticipated growth in the number of franchise locations. After being introduced by their creative agency and long-time Mindstream partner, we began collaborating with the Bonchon marketing team to create a recipe for success by leveraging a digital-first media plan with mouth-watering creative.

Challenge

Lift awareness for 90+ locations and capture demand for delivery and online order options during the pandemic shutdown.

Design a streamlined grand opening media strategy to scale with the growth of franchise locations quickly and efficiently.

Solution

We took a holistic, full-funnel approach with a variety of tactics to reach consumers at every stage of the customer journey. Multi-channel digital marketing campaigns including paid search, paid social and programmatic display were deployed around each of Bonchon’s 90+ locations driving customers to order online for delivery or pick-up at their local restaurant. Lifting awareness and capturing demand for these options during key (pandemic shutdown) times played a pivotal role in generating a positive outcome.

Our account setup and structure created efficiencies that allowed the ad budget to be utilized to reach a more relevant and targeted audience. We implemented first-party data to exclude current customers from prospecting and search campaigns. For a more relevant ad experience, messaging was also segmented to serve different creative to previous and new website visitors. Tracking on the online order site allowed campaigns to be optimized to the conversion point furthest down the funnel while Google Local campaigns were optimized to helped increase foot traffic and sales as well. Our responsiveness to creative changes, starts/stops, Grand Openings and LTO promotions also contributed to the success of the campaign.

Focused on the customer journey, we activated a multi-channel campaign and optimized towards KPIs that aligned with each tactic’s position along the path to purchase.

Results

Mindstream helped introduce Bonchon to new audiences who were hungry for something different; Bonchon did the rest. Year-over-year performance shows significant growth in sales as well as gains in efficiency.

Sales: 19% increase
Online Order CPA: 18% improvement
Paid Social CPA: 32% improvement
Paid Search Conversion Rate: 59% increase

Vice President of Marketing at Bonchon, Christina Coy loves our work. “I just wanted to thank you for all the time and effort you’ve put forth for Bonchon. We’re loving these numbers and appreciate all the support you’ve provided whenever we had issues with LinkedIn or with the online ordering site.

You’re an amazing team and I’m thrilled we brought you on board to be a part of the Bonchon team!

Thanks again for being such great partners.”

Leveraging the Industry’s Top Research Tools

Posted on July 28, 2021July 28, 2021 by Mindstream Media Group

As an agency, Mindstream Media Group invests over $1 million annually in the media industry’s best research, intelligence and analytics tools, which help to define and drive our media recommendations, as well as help our agency partners flourish.

Whether we are forming a comprehensive media partnership with another agency or working as a consulting partner for services like media buying, reporting or analytics, we’re able to leverage these valuable industry tools to guide and inform our strategies and maximize success for all parties involved. Our agency and client partners rely on us, as well as our tools, to answer challenging questions and propel their brands forward.

In some instances, we’re filling the gap for agency partners that have found themselves with limited media and research capabilities after the last year of possibly shifting or reducing resources.

While all of our tools like Nielsen, SQAD, eMarketer, SEMRush and Comscore provide value to our clients and partners, the top three that we use most are Kantar, Pathmatics and MRI-Simmons.

Here’s a closer look at each.

Kantar

We rely on Kantar to gain insight into the competitive landscape from a directional sense on where brands are spending across traditional and digital media. Kantar is an advertising intelligence tool that helps our clients’ creative, paid, owned and earned media be more effective. With the ability to research competitive activity and spend, including traditional (TV, radio, print and OOH) and some digital spend, as well as view competitive creative placement and assets, Kantar allows us to measure and optimize the effectiveness of content and activity across all media channels and provides actionable insights to improve performance. We are also able to understand how and where consumers are seeing client and competitive content and gain insight into how each channel impacts the brand, market share and sales growth.

Kantar helps advertisers stay ahead of the competition by giving access to industry spend and media mix trends, the ability to view and analyze competitive brand investments and evaluate creative messaging strategies. Kantar also helps brands understand their own campaigns’ performance to help gauge and optimize omnichannel strategies.

Source: Kantar

Recently, Kantar used analytics to determine what consumers expect from brands in regard to the social justice and human rights movements. By conducting contextual research on personal values and actions, and combining that with Kantar’s artificial intelligence tools, they were able to identify consumer trends related to their personal values. They found “demand for values showing momentum including bravery and improvement, while actions such as donations, supporting black-owned and anti-racism are likely to disrupt.”

At Mindstream Media Group we use Kantar in developing RFPs, client media planning and for identifying agency growth opportunities, as well as to aid clients with their own projects. MedStar Health, a hospital system based in the Northeast U.S., inquired about a recent competitive ad that had just started running on TV. Since TV data as recent as two days prior is available in Kantar, we were able to quickly identify and view those ads, find out when and where they started running, how many times they had run in each market, as well as pull the spend data, thus aiding in determining the competitive messaging strategy. We were then able to provide a more detailed competitive overview back to the client.

Pathmatics

Recently acquired by Sensor Tower, Pathmatics is a suite of marketing intelligence tools that help our team better understand the marketplace to identify key opportunities for clients. It allows us to get an idea of spend by brand and shows how creative messaging changes throughout the year. This has been especially helpful given the challenges using the right voice and messaging to resonate with consumers throughout the pandemic. Pathmatics allows us to create data-driven digital marketing strategies based on marketplace trends, competitive spend, messaging and budget allocation.

Pathmatics’ competitive spend tools for digital media provide robust insight into the most difficult to track ads like targeted and retargeted, mid- and post-roll, click-to-play video and even ads behind paywall sites and walled gardens. Spend data for multiple platforms is available including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, as well as video and display channels.

Using Pathmatics, we’re able to quickly understand creative, targeting, device, buying and media placement strategies of advertisers across the digital space. We can research which brands are spending on specific channels, how much they’re spending, see share of voice achieved and the creative messaging being used. We can compare strategies of a set of advertisers within an industry, analyze tactics across industries or drill into a single brand to gain competitive insight.

Source: Pathmatics.com

For example, imagine you’d like to know when your competitor’s ads are running, where they’re appearing and the number of impressions they’re receiving to identify gaps in coverage that can be used as an opportunity for your brand. Or perhaps you’re looking for intel to help design creative that will stand out from the crowd while resonating with your target audience. Pathmatics can provide all of these details and more and even shows the ads on the sites on which they appear.

MRI-Simmons

MRI-Simmons helps us identify and paint a more complete picture of an audience segment by going beyond demographics to reveal their attitudes, opinions and beliefs. This consumer and media analysis tool allows us to access consumer insights such as demographics, psychographics, brand affiliations and media consumption trends. Powered by thousands of attitudinal and behavioral data points obtained through ongoing surveys and passive measurement techniques, MRI-Simmons sheds light on the “why” behind consumer behavior. This level of granularity gives us the ability to drill down to the local level and target specific market segments.

We rely on the MRI-Simmons Insights Platform to quickly access consumer intelligence that allows us to identify behaviors that can be used to shape target audiences and media strategies. With the platform’s powerful search engine, we can gain a better understanding of specific consumer sets, efficiently build segments and develop personas. By reviewing historical trend reports we can learn more about particular behaviors and the mindset of a select audience. We’re able to identify media preferences and consumption habits as well as determine the interests and motivations of consumers.

Source: MRISimmons.com

This tool was the perfect solution to help an agency partner develop user personas for a new business prospect. We began by plugging in the prospect’s demographic data to identify media behaviors (where they consume, what they are watching/reading, etc.) and touchpoints by time of day as well as the factors that influence their purchases. This allowed us to better understand who these consumers are and paint a clear picture by creating a “day in the life” for each. Using raw data like indices and projected percent of the population, we were able to create a full-blown presentation of various personas, complete with names which really helped build the story for the overall pitch that was being prepared.

Complementary Insights Provide Holistic Viewpoint

The various insights gleaned from each of these tools is often combined to create a more comprehensive outlook. For example, Kantar, Pathmatics and MRI-Simmons were all used at various stages of a market research project conducted for a client seeking to expand into a new market with a new concept of their business. Kantar and Pathmatics were used to identify competitive activity like spend levels and placements in two markets to assess the potential to dominate a particular channel. One market clearly stood out by investment alone with $40+ million in expenditures compared to $3 million. Using another of our market research tools, SQAD, we took a deeper look at costs by market to determine which was actually the most efficient.

We then utilized MRI-Simmons Insights at the local level for each market to analyze concentration of the target audience. While both areas were top growing markets, one was slightly larger than the other; however, we found that the target audience made up a larger percentage of the total population in the smaller market. MRI-Simmons Insights also allowed us to analyze the media consumption habits of the target audience at the local market level. This was then compared to the highest indexing media channels to assess overlap with the gaps identified earlier where we found less competitive noise. Finally, current market conditions like the number of competitors, trends in unemployment rates, home values, tourism, etc. were evaluated to determine if one market was growing at a faster rate than the other. This collective intel was used to create a scorecard for each market which informed our overall market recommendation.

All three of these tools were also used to craft a successful digital media strategy for newcomer Varo in the fiercely growing and competitive neobank category. MRI-Simmons was used to analyze target audience media consumption habits and identify over-indexing media channels in select markets. We then used Kantar and Pathmatics to pull expenditure data for competitors and found they were spending heavily in the same tactics (primarily national TV and paid social) with limited expenditures in print, radio and OOH. When overlayed with the audience media consumption data, we found that radio and OOH indexed very high in these markets making these channels a clear winner for connecting with the target audience with less noise from competitors.

The value that each of these industry research tools brings is undeniable. Even better, brands and agencies can leverage our access to these tools through strategic partnerships and project work. At Mindstream Media Group, we are built to be an extension of your team, working closely with you to drive better results for your business. Whether you’re with a brand or an agency, if you’re looking for a partner to help take your work to the next level, connect with us to explore the opportunities.

How Agencies Can Grow Through Strategic Partnerships

Posted on February 25, 2021July 1, 2021 by Mindstream Media Group

Agency Solutions

12 Ways We Can Help You Fast-Forward Wins

Scale

Pricing Insight
Research
New Biz Clout
Increase Agency Value

Perspective

Revenue Sharing Options
No Minimums
No Incremental Labor
Protect Accounts

Capabilities

Performance Expertise
Analytics Suite
Extend Service Offering
You Win – Then, We Win

We Are Built To Be An Extension Of Your Team

	We are bold strategic advisors Obvious answers usually aren’t going to Fast-Forward things, so we go deep to find the correlations and opportunities that can help us drive better results.
	We are fueled by data, driven by insight Our business intelligence group mines your data and ours, not simply to plan, but to adjust in real time as market conditions evolve.
	We are capable of planning, buying and optimizing from national to hyper-local We make it simple for brands to drive results regardless of the selling environment and company marketing structure.
	We work in agile communities of specialists We don’t work in a traditional media hierarchy. We’re organized in communities of experts that create a virtuous cycle of improvement and position us to swarm to client opportunities.

Draw on Our Research Tools

We invest over $1 million annually in the media industry’s best research tools, which help to define and drive our media recommendations.

Leverage our Partnerships

Our media expertise has enabled our agency to partner with the best names in the business, like Google, Facebook, Yext, Dataxu, Microsoft, Snapchat and more.

How We Can Partner

3 Pillars


Traditional	Digital	Analytics

2 Engagement Options


	Full-service execution	Consulting

100% Transparent on Spend/Fees

Agency service models

Learn More

The agency landscape has changed dramatically as a result of numerous challenges across the marketplace. Learn more about how we’re filling the gap for agency partners that have found themselves with limited media and research capabilities. In this episode of Fast-Forward the Conversation, VP of Business Development Fabio Ramos and Planning Strategist Misty Castellanos join President Zac Keeney to discuss the value Mindstream can provide not only to agencies but to their clients as well.

Connect With Us

[Case Study]: Media Restructure Delivers 55% Lead Efficiency in Pandemic Year

Posted on February 11, 2021February 18, 2021 by Mindstream Media Group

The Graduate Management Admission Council^TM (GMAC) is a global, mission-driven association of leading graduate business schools. They own and administer the Graduate Management Admission Test^TM (GMAT^TM), the most widely used exam for graduate business school admissions. Mindstream Media Group has had the pleasure of partnering with GMAC for several years to hone strategic media initiatives that grow their business, even in spite of the difficulties created by the coronavirus pandemic.

Challenge

GMAC found themselves facing simultaneous challenges. The issue of potential MBA candidates opting out of business school to go straight to the workforce, combined with the increase in schools dismissing the need for the exam when recruiting new students, were already a trend impacting the business over the last several years; moreover, the 2020 pandemic caused all global test centers to shut down for months at different times as the virus progressed in each country. This resulted in a large decrease of their primary revenue source (in-person testing), considering at that point all tests were conducted in person.

These challenges needed to be overcome with less resources compared to previous years, due to the impact of the pandemic.

Solution

In order to solve these complex challenges, we gathered data and insights from previous years of campaigns and built a robust, yet lean, paid media funnel where the target audience (potential MBA candidates) could be nurtured through their journey from initial awareness and engagement, to the purchase of test preparation products, all the way through to the exam registration.

Based on the historical data, we completely restructured GMAC’s campaigns across all platforms involved, resulting in a channel mix allocation which included paid search, paid social and programmatic display. Creative focused on each step in the customer journey to resonate with users whether they had not yet considered graduate management education, were merely considering it or were ready to purchase study materials or register for the GMAT exam. Specific and measurable KPIs were identified within each stage to gauge campaign success.

The carefully planned funnel, along with remarkably close monitoring of data through our analytics technology and intel, allowed for agile adjustments on all types of allocations from channels, to creatives, to global regions, with the objective of maximizing the efficiency of every marketing dollar.

Results

At the end of the most challenging year in recent times, the overhauled marketing strategy and implementation of the paid media funnel yielded extraordinary results. In 2020, there was up to a 55 percent improvement (decrease) in Cost per Lead and a 70 percent improvement (decrease) in Cost per Registration compared to the previous year (2019). We anticipate continued improvement throughout 2021 as well as funnel stage allocations are adjusted to fine-tune the structure.

55% YoY Decrease in Cost per Lead

70% YoY Decrease in Cost per Registration

Julie Slovin, GMAC Senior Director of Strategic Marketing notes, “The funnel performed so well that the performance gains that we saw this year I think were so significant that they sort of outweighed the market losses that resulted from the pandemic, from an advertising and marketing effectiveness and efficiency standpoint.” Click here for the full interview.

Category: Paid Search