Reaching your target audience and advertising successfully in a cookie-free world? You still can!

16 Feb 2022

The Personal Data Authority wants Dutch advertisers and publishers to stop tracking their users immediately. That means a new era is dawning. A time when the use of data becomes different and marketing campaigns based on third-party cookies are no longer possible. However, the consequences need not be huge. With the right first-party data ánd the right tools, you can still create successful campaigns.

This article was written by Lucas Bos, managing director at EDM, one of the sponsors of the Customer Data Award 2021. The award was presented in early December 2021 during the online talk show: The Best Customer Data Cases of 2021.

As a marketer, you do your best to get a good picture of the customer by focusing on the customer journey; the journey the customer goes through from the creation of the need to the post-purchase process. By mapping data sources, such as website visits, purchases, socials and other (online) channels, you will know who and where your (potential) customers are and how best to address them.

Balancing interests

But as a marketer in this day and age, you have to balance essential interests in the above work. This is because society's opinion on the use of personal data is changing; consumers are not easily satisfied with the use of their data for marketing and/or communication purposes. In addition, more and more data is available. It is therefore logical that more legislation is needed to keep the balance between consumer privacy and advertisers' interests well balanced. In addition to legislation, you see major tech companies responding to consumers' desire to share less data. Think, for example, of pre-installed adblockers or browsers that do not allow cookies.

In addition, there are other developments that seem to curb the power of data. I say seem deliberately, because with first-party data as a starting point, a lot is possible. It just doesn't happen automatically. First, you need to have a number of organisational issues in order, namely: knowing what data you can access to create a customer view, ensuring reliable data and using data correctly in marketing tools.

Curious? Read the full article on DDMA.nl.