Data-Driven Digital Marketing on the Verge of Phased-Out Chrome Cookies

B2B marketers are soon to be deprived of the vital tracking data that informs targeted advertising decisions. Key advertising platforms like Google aim to elevate privacy standards and restrain capabilities for tracking individual browsing history and interactions with paid ads. Against this backdrop, new audience prospecting techniques must emerge.

GTM teams must develop a consent-first approach to targeted advertising ASAP. Enabling zero-party and consented customer data, mastering IP targeting, and capitalizing on collective data should help offset their dependency on third-party cookies.

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What Privacy Protection Policies Are Already in Effect?

In Google

Google announced an incremental shutdown of third-party cookies in January 2020. Although cookie deprecation was expected by 2022, the process is still ongoing. On September 7, 2023, Privacy Sandbox was released to foster the transition to entirely cookieless websites and balance user privacy with advertisers’ needs.

As of January 4, 2024, the search engine company initiated a phase-out for 1% of users, with plans to finalize it by Q3 2024. However, the complete phase-out is now expected sometime in 2025.

On iOS Devices

On iOS devices, the Cookie Apocalypse began with the implementation of App Tracking Transparency (ATT) in iOS 14. ATT provides opt-in/opt-out options for tracking in-app interactions to facilitate personalized advertising.

Since iOS 17, things have become even trickier as Apple rolled out another consent-first feature that further deteriorates targeting capabilities. Link Tracking Protection has shut down access to unique user identifiers that could previously be obtained from link click-throughs. Consequently, it has become impossible to rely on open rate metrics when tracking email campaigns targeted at Apple Mail app users.

The Consent-First Tactics for Tomorrow’s B2B Targeting

What is targeted advertising used for? Оbviously, it empowers businesses to engage with pre-qualified prospects who are most likely to buy based on their specific attributes, online activities, and purchase habits. Tracking cookies collected by third parties allowed marketers to generalize their view of a buyer persona. They could map the attributes that characterize prospects as the best sales opportunities and adjust targeting campaigns accordingly.

In the new consent-first reality, audience intelligence encounters privacy restraints. That said, alternative ways to collect audience data and act on it will persist. Let’s see how businesses can leverage these privacy-aligned prospecting techniques.

Incentivize Zero-Party Data Sharing

The zero-party data accounts for the details that users disclose and share voluntarily. You can effectively collect it with email surveys or website-integrated polls to collect such information as:

● Demographics (gender, age, marital status, etc.)

● Location (employment/living region)

● Preferences (leisure interests, community memberships)

The main perk of collecting zero-party data is that it fosters micro-segmentation, which is especially valuable for niche offers and up-selling practices. To grow your zero-party data volume consistently, adopt gamification practices that fit into your content marketing contextually and make participating rewardful for the audience. Offer exclusive free stuff in exchange, such as time-limited discounts and loyalty programs, for example.

Work on First-Party Relationships

In the same way, marketers can attain more first-party data in their CRMs. Loyalty benefits and gated content access can encourage prospects to fill in contact forms. This owned data fuels inbound lead nurturing practices that will help you warm up and educate leads and then score and follow up with most prospective ones.

First-party data can significantly impact targeting accuracy and outcomes. Consented emails yield higher open rates and link clicks.

Enable Collective First-Party Data

Smart data alliances open new opportunities for collaborative use of first-party databases. These partnerships need to be thoroughly evaluated with respect to ethical and legal aspects. Most importantly, you need to assess the potential business impact of the additional data you will get. Use data samples, test, and gauge the result to conclude whether collective data will revitalize your business growth.

Leverage IP Targeting Tools

IP targeting implies cross-matching IP addresses with actual email addresses and corporate domains. You can operationalize this by implementing tracking tools from martech providers on your website. The tracking script will fire each time visitor enters their work email. Email addresses will be sent to the tracking system and then merged with the work IP address.

The data providers will proceed to source IP signals from other websites where the recorded email addresses will appear. Eventually, this will allow them to link the email domain with several IP addresses used by business users. Now, you can confidently match those IP addresses back to the original companies when they visit other sites and target B2B accounts that show positive buying signals.

Increase Actionability of List-Based Audiences with Data Enrichment

Data enrichment practices help B2B marketers hone targeting precision and build custom audiences as close as possible to Ideal Customer profiles. In practice, enriched audience data yields considerable marketing ROI gains and decreases CPL/CPA.

If you want to grow the reach rates of your list-based audiences, consider Primer and similar B2B audience orchestration platforms. Primer sources out missing ad network identifiers (personal emails, phone numbers, Mobile Advertiser ID) from external data vendors and merges them with your CRM records. You can further push these custom audiences to multiple PPC channels and meet unprecedented matches with your target accounts. Expect a 45-65% ad audience match for Facebook campaigns and a 65-85% match for LinkedIn targeted ads.