It's Crunch Time—

But Most Campaigns Aren't Ready For The Cookieless Election

Given last week's slow news cycle, you will be forgiven for missing Google's latest missive on the future of cookies, which whipped up substantial controversy throughout the advertising industry. In typical Google fashion, they've once again sprinkled crumbs about their intentions, creating significant confusion for advertisers of all types.

But regardless of what Google is baking up next, it's time to chew on the reality that crunch time is already here, and every political advertiser needs cookieless solutions for this election cycle.

First, the bitter facts. . . 

Half the internet is cookieless already.

Let's roll that out one more time . . .

At a minimum, half of your targets already cannot be reached with cookies. Google Chrome represents only about half of U.S. browser share, and the other browsers have already phased out cookies.

So in most parts of the country, unless you're ok reaching only half of your targets, the heat is on for you to have cookieless solutions now.

But in California, the cookie news is even messier. Because in The Golden State, the Consumer Privacy Act has allowed people to opt out of cookies for over four years. When given the choice, only about 1/3 of Americans accept cookies. So in California, closer to 70% of your targets can't be reached with cookies. That's a lot to swallow.

Whisking Away Misconceptions About Google's Plans 

Much of the initial coverage of Google's announcement proclaimed that Google was keeping the cookie. But on a careful read of Google's cryptic blog post, that doesn't seem to be the new recipe that the company is proposing. 

What Google actually said, is that it will be creating some yet to be determined process "that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing . . . ." All this seems to say is that instead of eliminating the cookie itself, Google will let users opt out of cookies, just like they are already doing on much of the open web. And as you can see above, when given that choice, the vast majority of users say no to cookies. 

So Google's latest announcement reads like cookie crumbling in the consumers' hands, instead of by Google itself—not an indefinite cookie party as most commentary has suggested.

Cookieless Solutions

Unless you're ok missing 50-70% of your targets and wasting 50-70% of your campaign budgets on people not in your audience, you need cookieless solutions, and you need them now.

At Neptune Ops, we believe there is no magic ingredient for replacing the cookie, and cookie cutter solutions won't do for every campaign. Instead, depending on the circumstances, we are deploying three cookieless tools that are rising to the occasion:

🔱  Cookieless Identifiers

🔱  AI-Based Contextual Targeting

🔱  Geo-Fencing

We will explore each of these utensils in depth in future newsletters, but below is a brief summary of each.

Cookieless Identifiers

As the various browsers have phased out cookies, several new cookieless identifiers have started filling the void. While any one of these identifiers achieves a low match rate by itself, in combination they work well together. Neptune Ops uses several cookieless identifiers to maximize reach for our clients, and we are adding new ones all the time.

AI-Based Contextual Targeting

Through AI-based contextual targeting, we reach people based on the content they are consuming online. This can include people consuming content about candidates, races, issues, and any other content relevant to the campaign.

The icing on the top is that through ACR data, we can also process what people are consuming on TV, and re-target them based on this data. This allows for high-impact tactics like re-targeting audiences who have been exposed to a negative ad or news piece, and identifying people who have been under-exposed to linear ad buys and supplementing them with CTV.

Geo-Fencing

Through precision geo-fencing, we reach people based on GPS location data on a home-by-home basis. This allows us to deliver differentiated content to voters based on political party, demographics, primary language, and countless other criteria relevant to each campaign.

3 Suggestions To Operationalize This Email

🔱  Pour yourself a tall glass of milk and bid a sweet farewell to cookies, so you don't waste dough missing your targets in this election.

🔱  Decide now on "batter" ingredients for your campaigns to replace cookies.

🔱  Consider multiple ingredients to replace cookies for this election cycle. Like the famous Tollhouse cookie recipe, which calls for a combination of brown and white sugar, no single ingredient will do the job this year.

🔱  If you're enjoying this content, please consider forwarding it to a colleague or friend. If you're not already a subscriber, please sign up here to stay up to date on the latest developments in political technology.

🔱  If you'd like to learn more about cookieless solutions for your work, contact us today to chat. 

🔱  If you'd like to try the truly original Tollhouse recipe, which somehow mysteriously changed on the package sometime in the 1970s, you can find it here.