Six alternatives to third-party cookies

Adapt with Tapad, a part of Experian Leading browsers have made public announcements and technical deployments to reduce the digital advertising accessibility of third-party cookies for data collection, storage, and sharing due to growing privacy concerns. As a result, there has been growing momentum to find an alternative via cookieless IDs, with the intent to create a replacement that helps ensure continuity across the ecosystem.  At Tapad we’ve chosen to approach the market with a solution that provides agnostic interoperability for these cookieless identifiers, so that marketers can continue to work with the identity providers of their choice while maintaining the most holistic view of consumers across digital touchpoints. Introducing switchboard Switchboard is a module within The Tapad Graph that leverages our core capabilities across machine learning and identity management to provide a connection between traditional digital identifiers and the new wave of cookieless IDs that will be utilized in the future.  Customers of Tapad can take advantage of its broad ecosystem of identifiers to drive targeting and frequency capping strategies and enable detailed measurement and attribution post-deprecation of the third-party cookie. Our goal is to accelerate the adoption, scale, and utility of cookieless IDs with the release of the Switchboard module within The Tapad Graph, while maintaining an agnostic approach to the market. Switchboard for identity solutions In the evolving landscape agencies and marketers will need to invest, test, and analyze the best combination of cookieless ID partners to meet their objectives.  The Switchboard module will increase the utility and value of the cookieless ID space in conjunction with other addressable IDs,  by providing a layer of connectivity that will be natively missing with the deprecation of third-party cookies.  Identity solutions at launch: Switchboard for graph customers For existing Tapad customers who leverage the Switchboard module in The Tapad Graph, it will provide a seamless way to facilitate interoperability while resolving identity back to a Household or Individual. By providing this translation layer, Tapad will take on the responsibility of encryption and decryption protocols where applicable, which will deliver added functionality to our customers.  Tapad + Experian partners at launch: Use cases Resolve existing first-party data with new cookieless solutions through The Tapad Graph to minimize data loss Frequency cap at the Individual and Household level via Cookieless and traditional ID Reach consumers at scale across all touchpoints and IDs   Build a more inclusive and holistic view of the consumer journey Run accurate and scalable measurement before and after the formal deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome Map online data into offline activities  Hear why industry leaders are adapting with Tapad + Experian As advertisers continue to contemplate the future of identity, Amobee is proud to partner with Tapad, a part of Experian, on this next-generation solution to provide a comprehensive view of consumers. With the imminent loss of cookies, advertisers must think creatively in order to respectfully engage consumers in a privacy-compliant way and Switchboard can play an important role in addressing their respective identity needs.  — Bryan Everett | Senior Vice President of Global Business Development | Amobee   Connecting offline and online shopper activity in a privacy-compliant way is fundamental to marketing effectiveness and determining return on ad-spend. That’s why we’re excited to be a launch partner for Tapad + Experian's Switchboard offering; it provides a unified solution for supporting the variety of proprietary and anonymous user ID standards required by advertising demand-side platforms today.  — Brian Dunphy | SVP Digital Business and Strategic Partnerships | Catalina   As the industry evolves, Tapad + Experian's Switchboard presents a privacy-safe solution that allows for the continued activation of data and an alternative to advertising within walled garden environments. We look forward to collaborating with Tapad and the industry as we collectively transition to support cookieless identity.  — Don Lee |SVP of Global Platform Partnerships | Eyeota   We are excited to participate in this proactive solution to the sunset of third-party cookies. Switchboard’s agnostic interoperability, with BritePool and other ID providers, will create high-value for marketers as they transition to the era of cookieless web advertising.  — David J. Moore | CEO | BritePool   Interoperability is paramount for brand marketers, agencies, publishers and platforms if we want to support an open and free Internet and break free of the stranglehold of walled gardens. Lotame Panorama ID’s participation in Switchboard reflects our steadfast commitment to collaborating across and within the industry and providing value to all of its players.  — Pierre Diennet | Global Partnerships | Lotame   At this pivotal moment in the industry, we are excited to be partnering with Tapad, a part of Experian on their cookieless initiative and making Retargetly IDx available into the Switchboard solution, providing global brands, platforms and publishers with a compliant, cookieless ID solution for the Latin American market; enabling them to target, reach and measure users at scale through the region.  — Daniel Czaplinski | CEO and Co-Founder | Retargetly   With Audigent’s Halo ID, we’re architecting a cookieless future where clients and partners have confidence in the actionability and interoperability of exclusive 1st party audiences, originated from some of the world’s leading publishers and creators. We see collaboration as being critical to a collective understanding of identity and Tapad, a part of Experian as a trusted partner with solutions such as Switchboard to support continuity for marketers’ addressability.  — Drew Stein | CEO and Founder | Audigent   Facilitating access and usage of 1st party identifiers is crucial to help marketers prepare for the cookieless future. Thanks to Switchboard, ID5’s cookie-less IDs will be available to a wider audience of brands and agencies and enable them to run effective, data-driven campaigns beyond the third-party cookie.  — Mathieu Roche | CEO and Co-Founder | ID5   Addressing the current identity challenge requires transparency and collaboration. We are pleased to align ShareThis data with Tapad + Experian’s growing ecosystem. ShareThis data helps marketers evolve beyond the cookie to complete the picture. Tapad + Experian’s Switchboard offering will support ShareThis’s deep connections to clients and technology platforms, preserving and growing the accessibility of our data.  — Michael Gorman | SVP Product and Business Development | ShareThis   Get started with The Tapad Graph For personalized consultation on the value and benefits of The Tapad Graph for your business, email Sales@tapad.com today!  

With the emergence of email addresses as a currency for brands to communicate with their consumers offline; attaching email data to in-store purchases lays the groundwork for future advertising strategies. However, this advantage in having an additional digital touchpoint also creates a new challenge for marketers. How do they connect what they know about their customers via offline data and PII, or personally identifiable information, with what they want to know about their online behaviors and interactions? Taken a step further, how can they create actionable strategies that connect these two streams of consumer insights in order to drive them to make more future purchases; and even become loyalists? At a time when the shift from traditional to online shopping feels more like a landslide; connecting online and offline data has never been more valuable or more urgent. The solution for these marketers lies in the framework of identity resolution; and a key capability called hashed email onboarding. Hashed email onboarding is a privacy-safe way to connect consumer email addresses to their related digital devices and other digital identifiers. The methodology prevents the consumers actual email address from being readable; while still providing marketers a connection between those emails and other touchpoints for an individual. Instead of understanding the customer journey in two distinct parts; how they interact with a brand or company offline and separately how they interact with a brand online; hashed email onboarding allows for the two parts to be woven together in a holistic view of that consumer. The power of connecting these data sets can be seen when combining offline and online attribution and measurement to improve frequency capping and look-alike modeling. It’s important to note that not all identity resolution vendors that onboard hashed emails function in the same way or provide the same level of data. Some connect only to desktop or only to mobile devices; while others don’t actually make direct linkages at all- they simply provide the hashed emails as a targetable digital audience for upload. While hashed email onboarding and the connection between offline and online data is a powerful strategy; it needs to be as structured as possible across the most data available to reveal truly efficient targeting and measurement strategies. Tapad, a part of Experian has built a hashed email product feature that works with the existing flexibility of The Tapad Graph to deliver the most holistic consumer view in the structure that works best for your business objectives. Get started with The Tapad Graph   For personalized consultation on the value and benefits of The Tapad Graph for your business, email Sales@tapad.com today! 

One of the biggest challenges marketers face when planning digital advertising campaigns is getting an adequate number of impressions that yields measurable results at the lowest possible cost. As agencies, operators and advertisers are increasingly challenged about media budget, it is more important than ever to plan campaigns that generate enough information at the lowest possible cost. Through our design, deployment and measurement of advertising on a variety of platforms, Experian has developed best practices when planning digital advertising campaigns. We share some of these here, to help marketers with future campaign planning to maximize marketing effectiveness at a minimal cost. Using Path to Purchase to Determine the Right Number of Touch Points The Path to Purchase Funnel provides a framework to determine the number of touchpoints required to turn a prospect into a buyer. There are various phases the consumer goes through at each contact, and these phases dictate the number of touch points (or ‘touches’) required to induce a purchase. In the table below, we’ve described what these phases are, and the number of touch points required for those phases. The required number of touches will vary greatly among marketers, who must consider the expected time for a prospect to make decisions, competition in the marketplace, the novelty of the offer, and the level of engagement of the audience. For example, 15-second or 30-second audio and video ads played during scheduled breaks in programming may require more repetition than an ad played at a moment of high engagement, such as when the user interacts with the app, or during a “pre-roll” advertisement view prior to streamed content. Determining the Target Number of Impressions Needed to Persuade The next step involves determining how many exposures will be required to get the impressions or touch points needed to satisfy the consumer’s path to purchase. Let’s say a marketer has decided that four impressions are enough to make the case for the consumer to purchase, and that the marketer plans to reach 1 million prospects during the campaign. Perhaps the most intuitive solution is to provide four impressions for each reached prospect, such that 4 million impressions would be served during the campaign. However, during a normal digital campaign, some prospects will have zero impressions while others will have many. Because of this, we recommend planning to reach a target fraction (typically 80%) of the audience to receive the required number of impressions for purchase. The following table shows the predicted percent of audience exposed by average number of impressions served. Factoring Advertising Half-Life into Impressions Required Advertisement decay, or the fading consumer memory that reduces ad effectiveness, should also be factored into determining the right number of impressions for a successful campaign. For example, if a campaign length is planned to be 6 weeks, but the half-life of the advertisement is only three weeks, then more impressions would be needed to attain the number of touches required for the path to purchase. When planning campaigns for our partners, we adjust the target mean exposure frequency by the square root of the proportion of campaign length over advertisement half-life. For example, assuming a 3-week half-life and a 6-week campaign, we should multiply our target 5.5MM impressions by to get 7.78MM impressions. In the table below, we’ve demonstrated several scenarios of varying advertisement half-life. Other Considerations During Post-Campaign Analysis Once the campaign is completed, Experian recommends analyzing the distribution of impression frequency to determine how closely the actual impression frequencies matched to what was predicted. If frequencies do not align with the predicted, check to see if these assumptions are met: Make sure that advertising impressions are independent of each other. If rules are in place such that a prior impression affects the likelihood of a subsequent impression, this can affect the impression frequency. Check that the entire targeted population is on the ad platform long enough to be available for targeting. Some campaigns may have been instructed to be deployed in phases, which could limit the number of impressions to be delivered. Confirm that exposures can only occur one at a time, so that the impressions are deployed at distinct time intervals, giving the consumer the opportunity to view the advertisement Planning a successful campaign is critical for a test-measure-learn environment for an agency, operator, platform or advertiser. While initial up-front costs can be expensive, the long-term value to the business is significantly greater if tests are designed and administered appropriately. As a result, spending a little extra time thinking about your consumer’s path to purchase, exposure frequency, and the half-life of your advertisement can pay significant dividends in developing your digital advertising strategy.