“In the transition from 3rd to 1st party, publishers are asking all sorts of questions they haven’t covered for a long while.”

On 24 March, we brought together some of our top publisher clients for a conversation, from every corner of the Nordic region.

In collaboration with Magnite, our aim was to discuss the hot topic of the day (and probably also the year). That is, Google’s sunsetting of the third-party cookie, currently scheduled for the end of 2021.

Each week it seems there is a new story putting a dramatic new twist on events. However, the big question remains unchanged:

What Should Publishers Actually Do?

And so, this was the focus for debate at our event – what should publishers actually do, both now and in future?

Introducing the event was Magnite’s new UK & Nordics MD Julie Selman, followed by its VP of Product Management, Garrett McGrath, who gave some great insights on the state of the market, and how digital identity in particular is going to work out.

We are now at crossroads, where some hope to keep everything the same as before, while others see more of an opportunity to build back a new, better backbone for digital advertising.

From a 3rd party legacy, the new ID regime will undoubtedly shift to 1st party data.

The good news is that necessarily means power moves back into the control of publishers. The challenge is how 1st party data will scale.

The Future of ID

In future, broadly there will be three co-existing alternatives to the cookie:

Logged-in ID – which gets you everything you currently do with the cookie. The drawback is most likely only about 20% of total users will ever be logged in. And on CTV for example, that percentage may be even smaller. Liveramp and The Trade Desk openly admit this, saying they will use probabilistic matching for the rest.
Next is Google’s Privacy Sandbox – we’ll be subject to this regardless of what we think of it, so we probably should engage and understand it. There are still lots of questions to be answered. For example, what of transparency? Will it simply make the browser the new black box of machine learning algorithms?
Publisher 1st party segments – the concept here is essentially similar to Google’s FLoCs. The difference being who’s in control. The idea is that should absolutely be the publisher. A common taxonomy is key to publisher 1st party segments working, so we all speak the same language. And participants can then in turn build further taxonomies on top of that. All of this is currently being worked out from within the shared, non-profit industry group Prebid.org.

The thinking behind trying to create a community owned solution here is that, if we don’t give buyers the right tools, we know where the money will go.

What Should Publishers Do

What many publishers have experienced up to this point is a lot of people coming to them saying that their solution is the best, perhaps even the only solution – the one that solves all problems.

There is no one solution, and given the level of uncertainty in the industry, anyone who claims there is probably shouldn’t be trusted.

A key thing to remember is that 3rd party cookies still exist. So there’s no need to turn them off just yet.

Clearly, we also need to prepare for when they go away. Although it must be said, you get different answers from different people exactly when that will actually be.

“ID is table stakes for industry, therefore it should not be for profit.”

Start with Principles, not Solutions

Still, there’s no excuse for complacency, or inaction. One great piece of advice Garrett provided was this - instead of starting with solutions, look at what you want to achieve first. Establish ground rules or principles, and work from there.

Ask yourself as a publisher what’s important to you in future, apart of course from making money. Do logins appeal to you? Does sharing user-level data really sound good? There are lots of questions for example whether in long term that is wise.

ID is table stakes for industry, therefore it should not be for profit.

If the centre of gravity moves to the sell side and 1st party data – just because 3rd party cookies were popular for 10-15 years - regardless, there's no reason why publishers shouldn’t now be in control.

Third-party cookies have other uses that browsers can’t take away or the internet as we know it will break. Also, Google can say what they don’t like, but they don’t decide what you put on your site.

Further actions to consider:

Consider enabling Shared ID in Prebid, it will be valuable on many exchanges in future.
Keep having conversations - talk to your peers and buyers across the industry – there’s a definite opportunity to lead the conversation, even influence the course taken on the buy side.
Understand the privacy implications of how your chosen solutions function
For example, some are suggesting that using fingerprinting is okay somehow if it’s on the sell side. Can using non-ID signals like IP address or user agent ID as identifiers ever be considered as correct behaviour?
Whatever your course of action with ID, it should be in your control – it’s a community asset, you shouldn’t necessarily have to pay for it. It certainly shouldn’t leak or link to other sources you don’t want it to.

In the transition from 3rd to 1st party, publishers are asking all sorts of questions they haven’t covered for a long while.

Contextual data for example, has become a hot topic again – and will surely be more relevant in future. Especially combined with other sources. Others on the buy side (and sell side too, most likely) simply think everything will all just remain the same as ever.

Based on our event at least, in the short-term, the change and panic is overstated. Long-term will never be 100% clear. But there are undoubtedly lots of opportunities for publishers who take a smart approach. There’s also a clear gap in the market to lead others and define that future.

Get in touch with us if you want to discuss further the future of the cookie.

Post-Cookie ID - What Publishers Do Next