Outlines Five Best Investments to Keep Marketers Connected to Their Audiences

Kinesso, IPG’s connected intelligence company, debuted proprietary research designed to help brands maintain their connections with people in a rapidly changing advertising ecosystem. The report, titled “A Connected Approach to the Disconnected Identity Ecosystem,” explores how marketers can respond to disruptions to digital advertising, including technology innovations, the deprecation of the third-party cookie, and evolving privacy regulations. The study explores the challenges marketers are facing, where they are in their journey to find solutions, and the five best investments they can make right now – including identity solutions – to ensure their marketing is both effective for the brand and responsible to people.

Third-party cookies and identifiers have played a key role in most brands’ identity solutions, allowing them to reach audiences at scale and personalize communications across an increasingly complex ecosystem of publishers, content platforms, and different ways to buy ads. With the loss of these cookies and identifiers, advertisers expect diminished marketing effectiveness.

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“Brands must find a way to continue delivering meaningful, relevant marketing at a time when the advertising landscape is going through tremendous change”

According to the report’s findings:

• 75% agree it will make it harder to reach and scale audiences
• 71% agree measurement and attribution will suffer
• 66% agree Apple’s privacy-related changes will affect the profitability of direct response advertising.

Brands must find alternatives that will allow them to continue to reach their audiences, use the best media for their objectives, measure effectiveness, and have the flexibility to adapt as new publishers and platforms emerge.

“Brands must find a way to continue delivering meaningful, relevant marketing at a time when the advertising landscape is going through tremendous change,” said Arun Kumar, CEO, Kinesso and Global Chief Data and Marketing Technology Officer, IPG. “For marketers, the question becomes, what’s the best solution for my brand? However, this report highlights there is not a single solution, supporting our view that the right solution is a multi-layered approach. This research outlines the best bets – the investments marketers should be making now to ensure they achieve their business outcomes and continue to market responsibly.”

This research identifies five options that could be considered effective responses to the loss of third-party cookies and other changes, and outlines the effectiveness, feasibility, challenges and key partners needed to deploy each. Solutions include first-party data, alternative identifiers and identity solutions, working with so-called ‘walled gardens,’ adopting cohort-based solutions, and contextual targeting.

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Most of the advertisers Kinesso spoke to – 85% of them – agree that the industry needs to do more than the bare minimum to embrace a privacy-first age, but 63% are still at an early stage in figuring out the right investments for their brand. The report highlights the fact that there is no one solution to rule them all and finds advertisers exploring multiple options – and working with more than one partner – to find the right solution for their business:

• 68% of advertisers agree that using one or more of the alternatives to third-party cookies will result in better digital advertising outcomes than at present.
• Less than 15% of advertisers are developing solutions by themselves, citing lack of knowledge, budget, and time as primary drivers for working with partners.
• Advertisers work with ~2 partners on average — and seek bespoke solutions.

“With the death of the third-party cookie, it’s imperative that marketers innovate within the digital advertising space and prioritize a future that’s good for both marketers and individuals. Most brands are in the early stages of responding to these new challenges, and the strategies and projections that we’ve outlined in this report will be a catalyst for important planning discussions as marketers gear up to embrace our future,” said Tracy YoungLincoln, Chief Client Officer at Kinesso.

Kinesso’s “A Connected Approach to the Disconnected Identity Ecosystem” report is part of a series on responsible marketing created in conjunction with its sister IPG companies, Acxiom and Matterkind. The research is based on consumer and business surveys in the U.S. and UK as well as interviews with industry experts.