About 35% of digital and programmatic advertising takes place on the open web and outside of walled gardens such as Google, Meta and Amazon. Walled gardens have access to users who have consented to ads. Conversely, publishers on the open web (alongside their adtech partners) have historically relied on third-party cookies for matching and syncing audiences. 

The sunsetting of third-party cookies is upon us, and there is a growing panic in the digital ad industry over the potential loss of ad speed, efficiency and precision enabled by cookies—and the unknown costs of replacing them. As an advertiser, are you ready to say goodbye to cookies? 

If your advertising doesn't target consumers using third-party cookies on browsers cruising the open web, you might want to breathe a sigh of relief and ignore the deluge of articles about crumbling cookies and empty cookie jars—including this one.  

On the other hand, if you are part of the 75% of marketers in 2023 still relying on third-party cookies for targeting and measurement, you’ll have to stick around for more groan-inducing baking metaphors and puns.

You have enjoyed a free ride at the expense of consumer privacy. And you’ve had ample warning: For years the end of third-party cookies has been foretold, culminating in the ride finally ending this year. Advertisers need to find alternative routes for precision and efficiency. 

Here are four strategies to make your transition to privacy-compliant reach as seamless as possible:

Capitalize on first-party cookies 

Visitors to your website and apps are ideal for gathering a robust pool of first-party data for targeting and expanding reach. Be sure to always obtain consent for gathering personal data. First-party data is a great way to create personalized experiences, relevant ads and custom offers and promotions.

Rebalance your channel mix

Treat your media channels like a well-balanced investment portfolio. If feasible, move your paid media to multiple channels that don’t rely on third-party cookies. Connected TV, over-the-top and digital audio (including podcasts) are promising channels with addressable reach using IP addresses instead of cookies. Digital out-of-home is also productive, especially when combined with location data to accessibly reach audiences through mobile apps on Android devices. 

Rely on context to understand your audience 

Audiences are easily segmented by the content they consume. Content can determine interests and sensitivities to cultural cues such as food, music, values and even superstitions. Advertisers looking to reach specific ethnic audiences or consumers interested in health and wellness can do so with relevant ads on text, image and video content without the need for cookies. Recent research suggests that ads using contextual targeting perform just as well as—or better than—cookie-based targeting.

Use media mix modeling or geo-matched testing

Hot on the heels of cookieless advertising is media mix modeling and geo-matched testing. These strategies are undergoing a much-needed renaissance because they don’t rely on cookies for media measurement and attribution. Instead, media mix modeling and geo-matched testing are based on the total impact of media on sales. They can also account for factors like seasonality and competitive promotion intensity to determine impact by media channel. 

While immediate steps like the ones above can guide your short-term decisions over the next 12 months, in the long term, marketers should expect some standardization of viable universal identifiers to replace third-party cookies. 

In the meantime, the race to find an alternative ID is on, with several companies proposing their own versions such as UID2, RampID, ID5, Fabrick, Panorama and Google’s own Privacy Sandbox. Each solution relies on some combination of encrypted email or registration to serve as a privacy-protected ID. While each solution has its merits, further due diligence and testing is needed before one emerges a winner, garnering industry-wide backing.