💾 Throw down that cookie crutch!

Sins Of The Cookie: How Third-Party Cookies Set The Industry Back

Google Chrome’s third-party cookie deprecation plan is in effect, and the industry continues to await the fallout from the death of the cookie. However, it’s worth recognizing that the third-party cookie actually stymied the development of digital advertising. 

Sure, that little http text file was key to the evolution and dominance of programmatic advertising – for better and worse. And there’s plenty on the “worse” side of the ledger.

As we reflect on how third-party cookies held the industry back, the point isn’t to spit on the cookie’s partially dug grave – but to instead examine where the cookie’s varied replacements can help us right past missteps.

Here’s what the cookie got wrong and what its inheritors need to get right.

🔝 Google changes definition of ‘top ads’

Google updated its definition of top ads in its Help Center to better reflect how ads can appear in Google Search A spokesperson told Search Engine Land that this is just a “definitional change” and that it would not affect how performance metrics are calculated.

This update could indicate that Google is progressing with its idea to insert ads between organic search results, as seen in trials last year. This change could potentially result in more clicks for advertisers in areas of Google Search that have traditionally been reserved for organic content.

3️⃣ How To Survive 3 New Threats to Your SEO Strategy

Three trending SEO shockwaves could shake marketers to their core vitals.But don’t panic. You can still use search to drive engagement and traffic. You just need to revisit your SEO strategy to prevent your valuable content from getting buried where your audience won’t find it.

We asked industry leaders to explain the new threats to search as you know it, specifically Google’s Search Generative Experience, AI content impact, and the social search effect. Read what they think about those complications and what you can do to fortify content for your information-hungry audiences here.

🔢 How marketers are investing in games: IAB PlayFronts

The gaming industry saw a lot of disruption over the last year, including the consolidation of major publishers, layoffs and canceled game releases. On the ad side, however, marketing budgets for gaming are growing. As a result, the tone at the third annual IAB PlayFronts this week was measured but optimistic.

“We’re seeing a maturation of the space,” said IAB’s vice president, Experience Center, Zoe Soon, in her keynote address. “We’re seeing how gaming can deliver incremental audiences and amplify outcomes across the entire consumer journey.”

Can martech data be unified, federated, and siloed all at the same time? Yes, and each serves a purpose

Asking marketers which solutions they use to store, manage, and analyze data, you can see from the percentages that there are obviously multiple solutions working in parallel in most people’s stacks.

Almost everyone (83%) uses a CRM. Another 59% use a customer data platform (CDP). And another 57% use a data warehouse or data lake. Even though a case could be made for each of these to be the “system of record” or “source of truth”, you’ve obviously got a lot of stacks out there with two or three of these in them.

While some architectural purists may object, I think this can be a pragmatic design pattern. If these platforms are sharing the same data with each other — which they should, at least to an extent — real-world operations can benefit from having that data locally available in the context of each particular application. It can speed up performance, and it can adapt the “shape” of the data to the functional model of that application.

A cloud data warehouse as an aggregation platform can be particularly effective here, serving as the Grand Central station of data integration. Data that is relevant to multiple applications is unified in the warehouse. But the subset of that data used by individual apps may — emphasis on the word may — be federated into other apps when that delivers the greatest operational efficiency.

What’s important is the option to share data. Any data that an app collects or generates should be able to be piped into a warehouse (or other kind of data aggregation platform), so that you can choose to leverage it elsewhere in your stack when a use case arises. It’s a silo with many doors.

Unified, federated, and even siloed data all have roles in martech stacks.

The Truth About Marketing Certifications

Very few certification programs really help your career or business because they don’t challenge you to get better and gain real-world experience. 

Certifying real-world experience is uncommon because it is difficult and requires both action and traction. But that is the BEST way to not only get certified as a digital marketer… but also to build knowledge and develop valuable skills that stay with you for life.

I’m hosting a live webinar tomorrow to show you how to think differently about marketing certifications. 

Register To Join Me Here

• Data validation, and other unexpected trends in Google Analytics reports- Google Analytics on YouTube

• Converting Audiences with Level Three Strategies- Digital Marketer on YouTube

• The essential media measurement & attribution stack for 2024- GROW on YouTube

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