Boosting Cookieless Performance via Viant’s Household ID™ Solution

Industry preparation for the cookieless world of digital advertising was significantly affected earlier this month after Google’s decision not to deprecate third-party cookies. Nevertheless, third-party data loss is likely to continue, so advertisers shouldn’t stop their current or future cookieless planning.

To discuss how Viant is helping agencies and advertisers evolve beyond the cookie, we sat down with Senior Account Executive Greg Handler who shared how a client recently utilized and found success with Viant’s cookieless technology.

Q: Greg, just to set the stage: Let’s talk about the post-cookie world of digital advertising. Even though Google has decided to not sunset cookies, can you explain why it’s important for marketers to utilize non-cookie-dependent solutions?

Google’s decision to not deprecate the cookie shouldn’t change marketers’ strategy for 2H’24 and beyond. Cookies are currently only available in ~33% of all bid stream requests, as noted in Viant’s Bid Stream Dashboard. With the majority of current programmatic impressions being transacted on other identifiers, advertisers are in need of a technology that can reach core audiences on multiple channels and identifiers. Cookieless testing is a great way to discover how your DSP can evolve beyond the cookie for better reach and frequency management, increased persistency throughout channels and more measurable outcomes.

Q: For this campaign, the client worked with Viant to A/B test two campaigns for their pharma client — one using cookies, and one not using cookies. Can you discuss the results from the test?

Results showed the cookieless campaign achieved 100% scale and a 93% unique reach for activation across premium sites like Buzzfeed, DailyMail and Forbes. The campaign achieved similar success regarding brand safety. According to DoubleVerify, the campaign achieved over 70% viewability and adhered to rigorous industry standards for brand safety from DoubleVerify and Ads.txt, ensuring privacy-compliant advertising.

I would say that outside of campaign performance, the biggest takeaway is that Viant’s people-based solution was able to use our proprietary technology to transact without cookies from audience onboarding to execution — the whole nine yards. Our people-based solution has been preparing for the deprecation of the cookie for years while other platforms are now releasing their own ID solution. So even though cookies may be here to stay, for now, third-party cookie signal loss will continue, and our years preparing for the cookieless world have provided a post-cookie or no-cookie solution that can help advertisers better achieve their campaign goals.

Q. Our Household ID™ technology was also part of the test. Can you explain how the Household ID solution works and why it’s important for cookieless advertising?

The campaigns utilized Viant’s Household ID™ technology for the cookieless test. The Viant Household ID™ solution serves as a nexus point for marketers, data providers and publishers, integrating with publisher first-party data, to offer a holistic solution for targeting and measurement across various channels without the need for traditional cookies. This central identifier connects data points in a privacy-compliant manner, resolving programmatic identifiers and capturing more conversions than competitors, providing a solution to the deprecation of cookies and historical digital identifiers.

This was critical for cookieless testing in the case study as Viant’s identity graph mapped back impressions from multiple inventory sources, audiences and channels to retain deterministic reach and frequency (i.e. Safari, Chrome, cookieless PMPs). The cookie used to be the gold standard of ID for tracking, but now with new data and privacy laws, emerging channels, not to mention a more complex and convoluted programmatic landscape, that is no longer the case. The Viant Household ID™ solution is identifier agnostic, so it is a great solution to transact on any identifier that is available in the bid stream. 

Q. In your opinion, how do you think results from the cookieless campaign will help the client execute future cookieless campaigns?

The results were positive and Viant backed up our cookieless claims, this is just the beginning of cookieless testing. Viant’s DSP and Household ID™ solution will be the foundation to future cookieless tests. Plus, the beauty of Viant’s cookieless testing capabilities is that there is not a one size fits all approach. Despite Google’s decision not to deprecate the cookie, new cookieless technology has and will continue to emerge. Alternate IDs are growing in adoption and scale, and there’s also upcoming AI-powered products for contextual and audience targeting. Viant looks forward to testing these new products in tandem with our people-based technology to provide the solution marketers are looking for in today’s evolving digital advertising landscape.

Ready to move beyond the cookie with Viant’s Household ID™ solution? Get in touch today.