Big Shift for Marketers

We’ve Seen the Future and There Are No Cookies

Brian Skewes

Third-party cookies have been a major part of marketing arsenals for twenty-five years. Designed to track online consumer behavior, they were embraced by almost every ad platform for display advertising, targeting and retargeting, and behavioral marketing uses.

However, the times are a-changin’! Cookies are no stranger to controversy, and smart cookie-blocking tech allows consumers to block cookies at will. New and evolving regulations, such as the all-encompassing GDPR and the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), have driven this change in philosophy about how businesses can target potential customers.

A Significant Shift for Marketers

This fundamental change shouldn’t come as a surprise — there have been rumblings about how cookies undermine privacy and have contributed to skyrocketing identity theft numbers for years. Just as we said goodbye to Adobe Flash last year and quickly dried our tears, we’ll soon bid adieu to cookies, too.

What does this mean for your business? You’ll need to focus energies on other forms of advertising, marketing, and audience targeting. With the right tools and a forward-thinking approach, increasing market share in a post-cookie world shouldn’t be beyond any entrepreneur’s capability.

Why Have Cookies Been Given the Chop?

If you’re looking for a corporation to blame for the crumbling of cookies as a marketing tool, no need to look further than Apple.