When Google announced it wouldn’t wholly remove third-party cookies from Chrome, the industry missed the point – advertising is fundamentally broken. We’ve overly fixated on Google’s plans for third-party cookies, overlooking that these third-party signals are already obsolete for 70% of users. Half of open web users do not use Chrome, and today, 40% of Chrome sessions already don’t have a cookie, either because the consumer has manually disabled them or is browsing in incognito mode.

These numbers will likely get worse. According to Google, consumers are now being given “a new experience that lets users make an informed choice,” much like Apple has done with ATT. So, how are advertisers meant to reach these invisible consumers?

Move forwards

The reality today is that much of adtech relies on third-party signals. However, as more consumers choose alternative browsers or block cookies, advertisers are forced to bid on an ever smaller group of users, pushing up CPMs and further reducing the perceived efficiency of open web buying.

When advertisers look at their sales data, there’s often a massive misalignment between investment and successful outcomes for their business. Advertisers don’t have to work in this way, and even with Google’s news, it makes no sense for the industry to go backwards, against the will of consumers and towards an ever-dwindling pool of users.

Instead of using third-party cookies and tracking users across domains and environments, advertisers and agencies must build long-term viable business solutions for reaching their audiences. New technology is required to adapt, and the way data is shared by the hundreds of intermediaries between buyers and sellers needs to be addressed.

The next evolution of advertising helps advertisers leverage publishers’ first-party signals, which are both scalable, long-term, and deliver results.

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Say no to signal loss

While adtech has lost access to signals, publishers haven’t. The technology now exists to take publisher audiences and first-party signals and make them available to the entire advertising ecosystem. As a result, both can collaborate, irrespective of the buying journey, while maintaining privacy standards.

First-party data is essential for building cohorts and making intelligent contextual signals, allowing brands to find and target specific groups of consumers. Publishers have long had the power to support media owners and advertisers in recognising, activating, and reaching audiences to drive revenue. Now, they are entering an era where they are offering scaled solutions to walled gardens and securing their growth. At the same time, advertisers don’t want to create risky media strategies where their media spend is pushed into two or three big players. So, this presents more opportunities for open web publishers.

Embrace publisher collaboration

Advertisers need the ability to reach high-value audiences browsing in the moment, who are likely to connect to their messaging. By tapping into valuable first-party signals, they will be well-positioned to activate audiences in two ways. Firstly, from the customer data they collect from various brand interactions (e.g. loyalty schemes, booking data, website forms and registrations etc.) and secondly, from direct relationships with the user, most notably via publishers.

Direct partnerships and safe data collaboration offer advertisers and publishers a critical opportunity. First-party data analysis and modelling of known audiences enables both parties to scale consumer reach intelligently while protecting user privacy. When these data owners collaborate, not only is it enormously scaleable, but it is also performant.

By working directly with publishers, advertisers benefit from harnessing their data and addressing the 70% of audiences they can’t currently reach — a win-win for advertisers and publishers. Publisher signals deliver two to three times the reach, with increased sales and lower CPAs. When publishers apply their signals to impressions, their yield grows by up to 76%.

Win with publisher signals

Advertisers that want to build brand equity, grow market share, protect share of wallet, and drive performance in programmatic need a mechanism that enables them to talk to more than 30% of the open web. The only way to do this is by marrying first-party data between data owners—brands and media owners. Publisher first-party signals, cohorts, contextual data, and IDs are the only 100% addressable solution to reaching all consumers.

It’s a place where advertisers are getting value – where money in equals sales out, a publisher is fairly paid for their inventory and can support their businesses, and consumer data is not leaked into the bidstream. That feels like a sustainable, equitable and durable solution to a fundamentally broken advertising ecosystem.

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