Digital platforms are making positive changes when it comes to the importance of user privacy. Scott Switzer, our CTO, looks at what the future may hold as the ability to ID a user using 3rd party cookies or other artefacts is on the path to obsoletion.
The programmatic advertising ecosystem has been built on the 3rd party cookie. It is used for audience targeting, frequency capping, attribution, many forms of optimisation, and matching data between systems (both online and offline). It’s less that it's required for all these functions, more that because it was there it was used. This came at a price, principally user privacy, and a lack of protection for the user against mis-use of this data by bad actors.
As the 3rd party cookie fades into the history books, solutions to replace it with another user-level ID are only persisting the status quo. Solutions that minimise or remove completely the use of personal data are what users and regulators are seeking and more future proof. As we transition to a new way of working, growing value in a programmatic world requires investing in solutions for the short term and the long term.
The new future with Ozone ID
Alternatives exists for each of the previously mentioned uses of 3rd party cookies, and Ozone seeks to continuously innovate and evaluate tools and technologies that provide these alternatives. What follows is a glimpse at three product initiatives we are investing in; each of which is increasing the value of audiences and impressions without the use a 3rd party cookie:
1. Audience Targeting
Ozone has focused on increasing the addressability of impressions by building a permission-based ID caching system that not only uses 3rd party cookies as keys, but also other connectors like first party cookies, email hashes, and household IP addresses. This system has been in place since the end of 2019, and it has increased the addressability of Ozone inventory from 52% to over 70%. Ozone is continuing to increase the number of connectors to further push addressability higher. The success of this program will continue so long as partner ad platforms support an ID as the link between systems.
Fig 1: The impact of Ozone's ID cache on addressable inventory
When ID is no longer the main key between different ad platforms, it will still be used internally for our own segment building efforts.
Ozone Audience segments are already built with and without cookie support. As Ozone transitions advertisers to buy segment-based campaigns, our reliance on IDs will diminish. Ozone custom audiences, using a Verified ID (such as email or mobile phone) will also work when cookies are not available.
Our strategy is to have a number of offerings available to advertisers, and double-down on those that gain traction in the marketplace.
2 Frequency Capping
Ozone has been testing two different strategies for managing frequency with no 3rd party cookie support. Ozone ran a test campaign in June 2020 using IP based frequency capping in cases where no third party cookie was available. This test was successful - we unlocked over 85% more inventory than was available with traditional frequency capping, and post-impression metrics were similar or even higher than impressions with cookies. We plan to support IP-based frequency capping for all managed service campaigns in the future.
Fig 2: Impressions delivered via cookie and non-cookie based capping
Ozone will support 1st party cookies for frequency capping as well. This will unlock even more audience for campaigns where it is not important to frequency cap across publishers.
3 Attribution
Post-impression attribution has historically relied on 3rd party cookies or login data in order to deterministically match an ad impression or click with an event like a sale. There are several industry-wide efforts - such as Google’s Privacy Sandbox - to perform this function in a privacy-safe way. Ozone’s strategy regarding attribution is to participate in working groups with other major advertisers, publishers, and platforms to build a privacy-safe attribution solution.
Each of these show promise, and Ozone is actively representing the best interests of our stakeholders in these discussions - while at the same time evaluating other solutions which may also benefit you. Ozone has created a few principles from which to evaluate solutions (e.g. industry-wide, privacy-first, limited data leakage), and will actively participate in and integrate with the strongest solutions over the coming months.
Building a cookie-free future
These initiatives for cookie-free inventory are currently in trial-mode. To assess their impact, we are producing reports where customers can see how our efforts affect campaigns and revenue without cookies. Over the next 12 months, our goal is for cookie-free impressions to be just as valuable as impressions with cookies.
Transitioning to a cookie-free world is a process, and the needs of all parties (advertisers, publishers, users) need to be aligned. We want a robust ad ecosystem that keeps content free in a privacy safe way, and we will continue to innovate with our advertising, publishers ad tech partners to create value that works for everyone in a post cookie world. Experimentation is the key to success.
