The Internet Cookie Is Dead, So Who Cares?

In an age of increased privacy regulation, data breaches, and brand safety concerns, it doesn’t take much to scare advertisers. Yet the recent news that Google is making changes to how it treats third-party cookies in its Chrome browser had many a marketer shaking in their boots. While Google didn’t take the scorched-earth path many feared, the company’s soft approach seemed like a slow step toward a world without cookies. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the digital ad business who didn’t understand that the cookie’s days were numbered. But the Google news showed that there are very few people willing to admit that the cookie is already dead; it just hasn’t been buried yet. A world where consumers spend the majority of their digital time on mobile, and an overwhelming majority of that time within apps, only proves that cookies are inessential. In many ways, a cookie-less, in-app landscape is a regression back to the days of buying on ad networks or exchanges or, if you want to go further back, it’s similar to the days of print advertising. By eliminating the ability to hit the supposedly “right” individual based on behavioral characteristics, advertisers need to match their ads to the right place.Content becomes much more important, and that goes for the desktop Internet as well. But in mobile, there’s an important distinction: Every app is a single use case. Consumers often use apps for one specific thing, and that’s it. I must have 10 different sports apps on my phone, but I use each one for something different. The trick for the advertiser is understanding what value that app provides to the user, and then aligning their ad message with the right apps so that it reaches a receptive audience and matches the context. This is very different from many websites, which can offer content across a variety of different topics.