What Will Replace Third-party Cookies?

A monumental shift is coming to digital advertising and marketers are scrambling to figure out a solution after it happens. We're talking about the end of third-party cookies. But we're not really grieving their loss.

Cookies have been the mainstay of digital advertising for nearly 30 years. Now they're on the way out. And their demise, according to COO and Co-founder Chris Vanderhook, comes "frankly not a moment too soon."

But rather than fear the end of this era of digital advertising, Vanderhook believes marketers have "nothing to worry about."

Here's why.

Saying Goodbye to Third-Party Cookies

As consumers, we've all encountered the negative advertising experience of the third-party cookie. The ad that follows us around online, whether we're surfing the web on a desktop, phone, tablet or any other device connected to the internet.

It's repetitive and, frankly, an invasion of privacy.

Marketers also find little use for cookies nowadays. What started as an easy way to track ad exposure and purchasing from a single device has now reached a limit in a world where consumers own two, three, maybe even four devices.

"Let's face it: cookies are an outdated technology," explains Vanderhook. "They're bad for privacy, bad for consumers, bad for attribution and bad for marketers."

With the end of cookies on the horizon, some of the biggest names in tech are developing an alternative. One company proposes to track web page visits of people browsing online and share that data with marketers so they can send targeted advertisements.

"If that sounds an awful lot like the old cookie system to you," says Vanderhook, "you're not alone."

Another idea is to have internet users log in to each website they visit. This is impractical, explains Vanderhook, especially for smaller websites.

Thankfully, there's technology already available for marketers to say goodbye to cookies and reach consumers with a measurable, more relevant advertising experience.

The Power of People-Based Advertising

People-based advertising provides a future-ready solution for the cookieless era of digital advertising. Now, marketers can deliver personalized — and measurable — ad campaigns to consumers across their devices without over messaging or infringing on privacy concerns.

"People-based advertising provides accurate, persistent data and even allows marketers to group people into households to manage reach and frequency across programmatic channels," explains Vanderhook. "That includes high-growth channels like connected TV and digital audio."

Viant's people-based solution also allows marketers to further optimize their campaigns by leveraging a data lake. Powered by over 70 data partners and 30 identity match partners, Viant's proprietary data lake unlocks the insights advertisers need to drive performance.

"With supply from premium publishers within every category — including those just emerging into programmatic, marketers can target, buy and measure without having to switch between platforms," highlights Vanderhook. "And that makes a difference. Marketers who use our people-based software report three times the return on ad spending."

The Advertising Solution for the Evolving Internet

The end of third-party cookies is part of a larger online transformation: the emergence of the New Open Web. In this evolving digital landscape, what some call Web 3.0, marketers can deliver the advertising experience consumers have been looking for — without the use of cookies.

"While the rest of the programmatic industry is scurrying around trying to put some icing on the stale cookie idea," concludes Vanderhook, "Viant has been steadily building the capacity of our people-based software to create sustainable addressability that fits seamlessly into the whole programmatic ecosystem."

Learn more about What Replaces Cookies in the video above.