An illustration titled Marketers in a Cookieless World shows a screen with a cookie logo, keyboard etc.

How Will AI in Digital Marketing Save Marketers in a Cookieless World?

By Manas Kochar Category Artificial Intelligence Reading time 8-9 mins Published on Jan 20, 2023

The AI-Powered Ways for Marketers To Profitably Survive in the Cookieless Future

It's no secret that the use of cookies on the internet has started becoming obsolete. At the same time, we all know that cookies are the oxygen for marketing and advertising domain.

However, from the perspective of advanced cybersecurity measures, cookies are the real demon. So, anyway, our world has to get rid of cookies.

But as a marketer, it can be a big loss for you.

However, Google delaying the ban on third-party cookies on its browser is a positive sign. There is still time for marketers like you to act and strategize their plans according to the new regulations.

Marketers depend on third-party cookies and have been working with them for more than two decades. Tracking consumers' online behavior using cookies for targeting, retargeting, behavioral marketing, and display advertising has been the norm since the invention of the net.

Third-party cookies are indeed an essential asset for online advertising. It provides marketers access to consumer information and behavioral patterns for cross-site tracking & retargeting.

However, users are always worried about their data privacy and security online. This issue of data security is solved by using Artificial Intelligence marketing. Marketers employ AI in digital marketing to create effective strategies.

The ban of 3rd party cookies will make 85% of today's digital marketing useless. Google had previously stated that the initial phase of removing third-party cookies would begin by 2022. The positive news is the plan has been delayed again. The tech giant now proposes to terminate third-party cookies by late 2024.

What are Cookies from the perspective of marketing and advertising?

Cookies were first introduced on Netscape in 1994. It helps companies enhance and personalize user experience. They can even use it for verifying login or remembering language settings.

Cookies are small codes replaced within the browser whenever a user visits a specific website. It includes 2 types of information: The site and Unique user ID. Cookies capture language preference, website configuration, and login information.

An illustration shows two dashboards representing the cookie logo.

How Are Cookies Used to Collect Data?

Cookies collect user data like viewed pages, page clicks, and PII's (Personally Identifiable Information) like device ID, address, name, passwords, and credit/debit card numbers. The data collected by cookies help advertisers and marketers improve the marketing decision process & user experience.

The primary intention of Cookies was to provide a targeted and personalized experience to the users on the internet. Ad agencies then used it to target users. The advertisements follow the user on the different websites they visit.

This became an issue with the users as they expected the advertisers to value their privacy. Consumers nowadays are more likely to accept consent-based advertising. On the other hand, they also demand a more individualized browsing experience.

First-party cookies

First-party cookies provide the information to a brand that the user has willingly given. The users enter the data during profile creation and online purchasing. This makes first-party cookies an amazing data source available to businesses.

First-party data will have more importance and relevance, so the advertisers can always trust the first-party cookies.

It is used to understand the behavior of visitors on a website and the host domain. First-party cookies improve customer experience.

Third-party cookies

These types of cookies are the backbone of targeted advertisements. Even for online advertising and tracking purposes, they have been used to create distinct, targeted advertisements by marketers online. By collecting users' online behavioral data, businesses can create targeted strategies.

How can businesses combat this issue of a cookieless future?

AI is Replacing Cookies…

MAANG companies like Apple and Google know that 3rd party cookies have many privacy issues. So concerning this, marketers started developing cookieless digital marketing powered by AI.

Applications of AI in digital marketing have become an all-around innovation tool for companies.

One AI marketing technique called contextual advertising has already provided excellent results. Marketing professionals and experts predict the contextual advertising market to reach $376 billion by 2027.

An image shows a dashboard with various symbols such as cloud, analytical graphs, settings, a publish button etc., which helps in contextual advertising.

What is Contextual Advertising?

Contextual advertising helps marketers place adverts on web pages according to the content on the pages. Unlike other targeting methods, contextual targeting analyzes the website and generates relevant advertisements suited to customers' needs.

Contextual advertising aims to produce brand-suitable ads and target users when consuming similar content.

For, e.g. displaying a mobile phone ad on a blog post about affordable phones online. It is achieved through segmenting ads on the basis of keywords or webpage topics.

This targeting exercises context-centric rather than user-centric approaches. When employed, they don't require the use of cookies and personal data. As a result, the user will see adverts tailored to the webpage content.

Contextual advertising matches the ads to the content rather than the user.

There are many ways to achieve contextual targeting.

  • Analyzing content on the website and determining the tone.

  • Analyzing video/image content to determine the sentiment.

  • Analyzing content created by the consumer using natural language processing.

  • Automatically develop various inventive elements according to the context.

Using AI in Digital Marketing

In the case of marketing, AI is the new replacement for cookies. As everyone knows, data preprocessing powered by AI can take place in any format. It can analyze user behavior and find patterns. Then personalize the ads according to the target user's current interests.

AI can run an effective campaign without collecting PII (Personally Identifiable Information). This avoids privacy issues.

  • AI in digital marketing results in advertising based on users' identities rather than tracking individual users' private data. AI marketing algorithms create groups of customers with similar likenesses by analyzing their behavioral patterns.

  • AI leverages data more than cookie-tracking methods, providing insightful user preference information to advertisers so that they can create contextual advertisements. This way, the customer likes the ads, and digital marketers can generate a higher conversion rate.

Google, Meta, and IBM have all started to develop AI-based advertising algorithms for a new world of cookieless advertising.

How can organizations leverage AI in Digital Marketing for the cookieless future?

An image shows various types of customer profiles in a hexagonal design.

a. Create your audience database

First-party cookies are ideal for storing visitors' vital information on the website. It allows organizations to create their customer database. By learning how the user/consumer interacts with the website, like the number of visits or clicks, helps develop an effective marketing strategy.

If a visitor stays logged in on the website for more features, they leave tracks of behavioral patterns. Advertisers and marketers can analyze this pattern for insights.

b. Increase customer engagement

AI will improve customer engagement to generate more enhanced value for customers. Such as, chatbots can provide websites with data to save in their database for an audience with similar preferences.

It will even tell about the customers who have not reached the expected customer journey. This way, it can create better content for its customers. It helps us know what strategies inspire more sales, and thereby we can manipulate customer retention.

c. Update the relevant audience list

Marketers can learn from data management platforms about relevant audiences. They can use AI to gain behavioral research skills without being intrusive to the consumer's privacy.

Advertisers can even revitalize strategies like contextual advertising. Placing Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads on the website, which ranks the keyword with similar content, is also an effective strategy. For example, if you sell a book, your PPC will be placed on book-selling websites like Amazon.

d. Data-clean rooms

Data-clean rooms refer to a shared environment by two applications. They can share and match their data sets based on shared variables. Take the example of Meta or Google, which examines customer information through first-party cookies under tough privacy and protection protocols. The matching data sets may be used to create marketing strategies, improve cross-channel user satisfaction, and improve attribution modeling.

Data-clean rooms are essential for log-level analysis and help marketers deliver insight at an individual level.

An example of a data-clean room is the Ads datahub launched by Google. It helps advertisers link event marketing data with consumer data. Even Amazon is testing a cleanroom that will enable marketers to improve the campaign performance measurement even after bypassing the cookies.

How does AI in cookieless advertising affect Digital marketing?

AI is the ideal solution for cookieless advertising. Utilizing AI in digital marketing as a marketer, you can improve the relationship between a user and the internet by respecting user privacy. If users know their personal and sensitive data remains safe, they will interact more with engaging ads and trust the brand.

Organizations like Toyota and Mastercard have started AI-powered cookieless advertising campaigns reaching millions of customers and users.

This brings in a major shift in the digital marketing world. Marketers can now feel free to integrate modern technologies into their strategies and not rely on outdated systems. AI has brought the marketing field a better and unique solution for the cookieless future.

Conclusion

Organizations have already started strategizing for the cookieless future of websites. Brands can remove the older, vulnerable advertised methods with personalized algorithms. Many firms continue to witness the potency of AI-powered marketing.

Through the utilization of AI in digital marketing, organizations are more than capable of making data-driven smart decisions. It will impact the growth of the business in a positive way. By experimenting and testing the existing AI technologies, firms can become more tech-savvy in implementing AI in digital marketing in the future.

So these were all about the basics of cookieless digital marketing. But are you feeling lost or insecure as a marketer? The comprehensive artificial intelligence certification course will help you practice AI applications in different fields. Through a course like this, you can apply AI in modern practices to learn better.