Future-proof your business with privacy-first audience-targeting solutions
Last year, 62% of all media spend was put towards digital advertising. A vast proportion of this spend utilised third-party cookies, which have become an essential part of how agencies and brands target consumers. It’s been established as a cheap, easy-to-implement, and effective way to target relevant audiences.
However, consumer’s concern about their personal data is now at an all time high. And so, legislation has evolved to protect consumers and put more laws in place, such as the GDPR in 2018 and the Californian Consumer Privacy Act in 2020.
As a consequence, third-party cookies are depreciating, so what does the future of online advertising look like? What are the best and most effective alternative solutions?
Well, first let’s look at how third party cookies worked…
The cookie is essentially a way of tracking an individual across their online activity, gaining knowledge as they move from one webpage to another. For example, a hotel brand may advertise to the cookie IDs that have recently been on airline websites, with the knowledge that they are in-market and have purchase intent for travel related products and services.
When the third-party cookie disappears, this knowledge goes. It’s worth stating that 1st party cookies are still allowed, as essentially the publisher gains consent to track that individual’s use across their website so they can serve them relevant content and improve customer experience. But the challenge is the publisher will no longer know when a person has landed on their website after looking at airline flights, and so they can’t sell their digital ad placement to a hotel brand advertiser empowered with the knowledge they are doing on holiday.
What are the industry solutions?
So what are the alternatives? How are the leaders in the industry finding replacement solutions to third-party cookies?
There are four solutions currently being championed in the marketplace:
What is Starcount’s Approach
The benefits of an approach like Starcounts is that it combines the best of the industry-championed solutions and empowers businesses with a future-proofed solution for a privacy-first advertising landscape.
- Starcount uses GEO as the privacy-first, future-proofed addressable identifier
- Starcount uses CONTEXTUAL behavioural data to understand what consumers are currently doing by blending multiple data sources of both online and offline buying behaviours from open banking data, with social media following behaviours and demographic data, so that advertisers still have the knowledge of what their customers are currently doing, who they are, what they’re buying and engaging with.
- Starcount is available in CLEAN ROOMS to enrich 1PD solutions
- Starcount can be onboarded as a contextual enrichment to UNIVERSAL ID solutions to ensure they don’t lose the third-party behaviours currently seen with cookies.
We are the first to market with this solution and that’s because we have not had to pivot our business away from using IDs such as cookies. We have always been in the business of understanding consumer behaviour and have a heritage of pioneering the direction of the industry, as our background is founding dunnhumby.
What does this mean for you?
For Media Agencies:
Your challenge: You are overwhelmed by data sources, technology solutions and channel options. There isn’t a silver-bullet for the new world, but you want to invest in solutions that are ID-less to future-proof your agency, whilst still being effective and continuing to deliver campaign performance. Your clients expect data to be part of your media plan and ideally that investment would sit across multiple media touchpoints.
Our approach: With Starcount’s Geo Audience Dataset you can create data-driven media plans and you can continue to activate against behavioural audiences in a privacy safe way without diluting targeting strategies across channels. Geo is a true omnichannel opportunity and using starcount’s variables means that activation teams can work in line with planning and strategy to ensure a joined up approach.
For Publishers & Media Owners:
Your challenge: Your 1PD only shows a narrow view of what your audiences are doing with you. To create a comparable amount of advertising revenue, it’s vital you have enrichment data to see what your audience is doing outside of your publisher environment so you can keep a diversity of advertisers spending on your platform.
Our approach: Enrich your 1PD with a contextual view of what your consumers are actually buying and loving at the moment (from banking and social media behaviours) so that you can show advertisers your audience that are right for their brand. The added benefit of understanding these audience behaviours in the ability to create relevant content and grow your known subscriber base.
For Brands:
Your challenge: Your 1PD only shows a narrow view of what your customers are doing with you, and it’s becoming increasingly hard to find lookalike audiences or retarget your customers in the digital ecosystem
Our approach: Enrich your 1PD with a contextual view of what your consumers are actually buying and loving at the moment (from banking and social media behaviours) so that you can find the best of your high-value and new audiences across the publisher ecosystem in a privacy-first targeting solution using the granularity of geo at full postcode.
We have proven it works…
- Our partners see a 20% increase in sales conversion through targeted digital advertising with Starcount data
- 89% of marketers say they increased sales by using customer location data to boost effectiveness of ad campaigns
- 94% of marketers will be reviewing geo in the marketing strategy next year
Act Now!
This year is a pivotal time for anyone in the industry and it’s vital that businesses look at the market’s innovations and assess the best investments to give them a future-proofed solution in the market. At the end of 2024, we’ll all be doing things differently!
Get in touch to speak with Starcount about the best approach for you.
