This thought leadership article is authored by Digital Alchemy’s CEO, Regan Yan
The impending demise of third party cookies is forcing a lot of organisations to rethink their data and targeting strategies. Inevitably, that means tackling the elephant in the room — first party data. Recently there has been a great flurry over first party data, consolidating online and offline systems, building CDPs, etc. There is a small (large) part of this that makes me laugh. There has been so much focus in marketing on digital data that integration to offline data has taken a back seat. Now with third party cookies soon to be a distant memory, marketers are on the hunt again for ways to gain a deeper insight into their customers and to develop meaningful marketing based on customer interactions.
In truth, third party cookies were really just window dressing anyway in comparison to the richness of data contained in transactional, customer and product systems. Third party cookies were popular with marketers for the same reason that third party data was popular 20 years ago — you can build insights into your customers ostensibly without having to work with IT. But now that window is closing, marketers are being forced back to their own data, back to the first party.
So what does Tinder have to do with this? Well, I’m glad you asked. I like to compare your Tinder profile to your third party cookie. It somewhat represents someone who roughly looks like you. Not all the information is right, and I’m able to close off the parts of my profile that I don’t want you to see. Just as everyone on Tinder sees the same pictures and profile, the same is true on a third party cookie.
by Regan Yan, the CEO of Digital Alchemy.
Regan is a subject-matter expert in analytical database marketing and customer relationship marketing, as well as an in-demand presenter and keynote speaker at national and international events. He also authors thought leadership pieces on data-driven marketing that can be found on the DA Blog.
