In my 23 years of practicing digital media and marketing, there has never been a threat to our way of doing business – from audience targeting, tracking, to ROI attribution – as challenging as this current situation. CCPA, GDPR, and ad-blockers started the trend, but these were all easy to circumvent through pure play technology solutions. This is different. The sweeping changes brought about by Google and Apple will cause the industry to not just rely on technology (even though it is vital to have the right tools in place), but we will have to go back to delivering value and regaining trust. This evolving environment is a perfect fit for our agency’s human-centered, value-driven marketing approach. Offering people value in exchange for information will enable our clients to create and nurture more valuable customer relationships.

Being part of a full-service, integrated agency that has always focused on human experience and the value exchange helped me frame the approach at solving this challenge. I call this approach the 4As of 1PD: Attraction – creating the value exchange (content in any form), Activation – finding the best places to communicate the value exchange, Acquisition – ensuring we have the right technology for audience storage and segmentation, and Analysis – having the right tools to quickly derive actionable insights. This approach forces us to seek out and employ the best technologies – from DMPs, DSPs, CRM and tracking/attribution; all while creating the content and tools that initiate first-party data collection.

Here are some things you can do right now that ladder up to the 4As of 1PD:

• Find innovative ways of building a first-party database: Surveys can be used to generate look-alike-audiences that may be better than third-party data; personalized experiences and exclusive content are great value-exchanges for data collection; media vendors also offer a myriad of tactics that build first-party data (engaging with creative and watching CTV ads are just two examples).
• Employ 3PA, such as Campaign Manager: This tactic enables cohort tracking to ensure you are capturing as much conversion data as possible using Google’s new Cohort methodology; educate yourself on the changes you need to anticipate when looking at YoY metrics and re-establishing KPI.
• Leverage Nielsen’s Identity Sync solution: This offering enables both first-party data/server-to-server and hashed ID collection tied to Nielsen’s identity graph. Make sure your clients have an area of user authentication on their site or app to enable this first-party data collection and attribution to take place. This user authentication will allow you to track conversions even with cookie-less challenges.
• Utilize a DMP to collect, store and activate first-party data (e.g., emails, cell-phones, addresses, clicks/visits/actions on creative and website): Segment and enrich your audiences while creating high-performing look-alikes that are not reliant on cookies.
• Utilize CRM and loyalty rewards: These become imperative tools that need to be part of your marketing stack to help you understand and increase LTV.
• Don’t put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to FLOC versus UID 2.0: Leverage both to ensure maximum audience coverage and opportunities to connect.
• Attend vendor meeting: Take as many vendor meetings as you can to learn about all the new cookie-less ways of targeting and capturing data. A lot of companies are iterating their services right now and you’ll want a test-and-learn approach to find the best solutions. Inconsistency is the new consistency.
• Finally, be transparent across all your efforts: Allow audiences the chance to opt-out at any time: If you’ve got the right value-exchange, then you have nothing to worry about.