One of the biggest challenges faced by tech giants and advertisers alike is driving accurate advertising campaigns without cookies
Is programmatic advertising still the right solution in a cookie-less world?
In this Q&A, Joshua Wilson, Commercial Director (JAPAC), Crimtan, shares insights on advertising in the post-cookie era and how companies can address this challenge.
Can you briefly discuss programmatic advertising, and what it can do to today’s businesses?
Wilson: Programmatic advertising is revolutionizing marketing. It uses sophisticated technology to purchase digital ads, making sure they reach the right people through the right channels and achieve the best results.
With programmatic advertising, businesses can leverage data analytics and machine learning to accurately reach their desired audience. This not only makes ads more relevant to the audience but also ensures the money spent on advertising is optimal, maximizing the impact of each dollar spent.
Programmatic advertising is also efficient in placing ads strategically. It allows brands to adjust and adapt to the changing market conditions and audience behaviors in real time. This arms businesses with the agility to display the right ad to the right audience and the right time, across various digital platforms.
All in all, this data-driven approach empowers businesses of all sizes to achieve impactful results while streamlining the advertising process. With its scalability and targeting capabilities, programmatic advertising has become one of the fastest-growing ad types and an indispensable asset in modern marketing strategies.
What are the challenges that tech giants and advertisers face when it comes to programmatic advertising?
Wilson: Programmatic advertising faces significant challenges, especially with the phased-out use of cookies. Cookies, which were once the backbone of targeted ads, now raise privacy concerns due to their ability to track user behavior online. Without the use of cookies, driving accurate campaigns has become more challenging.
In today’s evolving landscape, it’s important to balance effective advertising while ensuring compliance with increasingly stringent privacy regulations. Tech giants and advertisers alike are now tasked with the imperative need to discover innovative, privacy-compliant methodologies that can maintain the effectiveness of their advertising efforts without compromising user privacy. Striking this delicate balance requires a nuanced approach, necessitating the development and implementation of ethical and transparent data-gathering practices.
And how can companies address these challenges?
Wilson: When confronted with the challenges of programmatic advertising, companies can take several strategic initiatives to navigate this changing landscape effectively.
Firstly, establishing partnerships with technology providers, enabling a comprehensive analysis of first-party data. This collaborative effort means businesses can craft targeted campaigns, leveraging insights to build lookalike audiences, personalize content, and effectively reach desired demographics online.
Secondly, brands need to consider tailoring different messaging across the entire customer’s lifecycle journey. By identifying customers and customizing messaging accordingly, brands can efficiently engage with their audience, fostering deeper connections and driving conversions.
Finally, consistency in messaging is key to maintaining brand integrity and ensuring maximum impact.
What trends in the Asia-Pacific region do you see when it comes to programmatic advertising?
Wilson: With its anticipated value expected to reach USD275.5 billion by 2026, the APAC region poses many exciting emerging trends and opportunities for advertisers in the coming years.
Amid the battle against cookies, two main approaches will continue to shape the marketing industry – contextual targeting and behavioral targeting. The former involves delivering ads based on the content of the webpage while the latter relies on data from the website visitors. As the industry evolves, there is a potential shift towards alternative ways of monetizing the open web, whether it be through data or exclusive publishers. This shift will allow advertisers to have more options when it comes to advertising channels.
With the move away from using cookies and a greater emphasis on privacy, it may become more difficult for brands that rely on traditional methods to measure the effectiveness of their digital advertising campaigns.
Brands that embrace complexity by using multiple systems and exploring approaches like mixed media modeling or a comprehensive marketing strategy can get a complete view of customer behavior and are more likely to succeed.
This reminds us that in the marketing world, having a presence is meaningless without accurate measurement.
For example, despite high mobile usage in Southeast Asia, the region’s e-commerce growth has been slowed down by low credit card usage. To boost e-commerce sales in these markets, it is important to combine offline and online marketing strategies to drive people to physical stores, especially after COVID.
At the same time, emerging technologies like AI, biometrics, and facial recognition offer new insights, but they also face regulatory and ethical challenges that need to be carefully navigated.
Avoiding fragmented approaches to digital marketing is another critical aspect of the Asia-Pacific programmatic advertising landscape. A potential loss of approximately 30% of valuable data at each step of the campaign chain due to fragmentation poses an ongoing challenge to businesses.
