Lately, The Reductionist has been getting a fair amount of worried inquiries from clients—aka, the sources of all known heat and light in the universe—about impending changes in precision digital marketing. In particular, there seems to be a high degree of angst about Google’s widely bruited intent to crumble cookies, implode pixels, and otherwise obliteratively assassinate the most common ways we use to data-stalk consumers across every platform and screen. Oh, sorry. Meant to say, “target.”

The first thought was to attempt to crack wise with something on the order of, “uncertainty, unexpected isolation, even outright fear—what…you thought I was talking about the pandemic?”  Thankfully, common decency, not to mention my editor, prevailed.

The second idea was to share a personal opinion that all these privacy related changes are a) oddly enough, redounding to the benefit of the digital media outlets, themselves, by b) requiring us to buy broader swaths of people with far less accuracy and/or c) forcing us to live within the limits of the media’s own “walled gardens,” which means even more potential duplication and waste.

Okay, while there’s likely a measure of truth to this cynic’s view, it’s really the kind of glib generalization you’d expect from someone who makes creative goodies, not the expert who makes sure they get seen.

That led to the third notion, which a wiser head would have gotten to first: asking someone who buys this stuff for a living to give us the straight scoop. To that end, I asked Jim Hammerel, a Google Premier Partner and Brainchild’s sherpa-in-all-things-search to offer some clarity, which, of course, he did:

Q—What’s the big change? Jim: Big Tech companies, like Google, Facebook, and Apple, are taking action to preserve user privacy by preventing advertisers from tracking and ad targeting using third-party data. To put this in simple terms you won’t be able to take the data from an external source to identify a Google/Facebook/Apple audience and then send them a message based on that targeting.

Q—Why is this happening?  Jim: This is largely driven by a heightened demand for user privacy after Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica fallout after the 2016 US election. It also reflects increased demand from consumers for privacy protections, along with an increased fear of federal action against Big Tech via regulation and related antitrust suits.

Q—When do these changes take effect? Jim: While shifts are beginning now, and certain to continue into the future, Google is slated to disable third-party cookies in 2022. But stay tuned, because there are new developments almost every day. Apple, in particular, seems to be evolving its plans and policies based on a shifting reading of both the market and regulatory requirements.

Q—How will advertisers have to adapt?  Jim: In the short-term, we'll need to focus on collecting as much first-party data as we can, in effect building our own audience lists. This means giving our website visitors the opportunity and the incentive to provide their email addresses and contact information as a way to get permission to stay in touch while also helping us build better “lookalike” targeting models.

Q—That sounds pretty iffy.  Jim: It’s not ideal, but it’s not as difficult as you might think. So far, at least, the data shows that people seem comfortable providing permission as long as it gives them access to something of interest. Moreover, there are proven ways to test your way into stronger and more compelling reasons for people to opt-in for further contact.

Q—Isn’t Google setting budgetary minimums to use your own data? Jim: As of now, in order to upload a list—say a voter file for a political campaign—you’ll have to meet Google’s $50k and 6-month account history threshold. Otherwise, we’ll have to rely on Google's off-the-shelf targeting capabilities, which are actually pretty robust when it comes to affinity, demography, geography, and behavior. Not optimal, but not the end of the world. I would imagine in the near future Google will open up Customer Match Audiences (a more surgical tool, ed.) to a wider range of advertisers.

Q—What about the longer term? Jim: Because nobody really has a complete replacement solution yet, targeting will be a bit scattershot until one or two systems are finally mass adopted. Google has its own system called FLoC that leverages machine learning to group people into cohorts without specifically identifying each individual in the group; that allows you to target messages without compromising privacy.

Q—Adding it up? Jim: It's a fresh new world for all of us. We'll need to have a 'wait-and-see' attitude as new ad targeting capabilities are released and tested. Focusing on establishing relationships with users/customers/visitors now to capture their data first-party should be a priority. In the end, I think that building privacy protections is a good thing—helping build trust while keeping the internet true to its original intent.