What’s the difference between a cookie and an internal combustion engine? Well, the truth is their differences are plentiful! They aren’t even remotely similar but for one thing; they both have an expiry date that is causing anxiety, confusion and endless discussion on how bad the world will be without them.
On one side the advertising and digital marketing industry faces a cookieless future. On the other, we have an automotive industry that is transitioning through the electrification of vehicles. Both hold a bright future, both come with significant upheaval and infrastructure change and most importantly both will require people to go through change.
As a massive enthusiast of everything automotive, and a digital marketer who specializes in data, I feel I’m living through both of these changes firsthand. As a self-proclaimed “petrolhead,” with a passion for racing and a deep appreciation of the roar of a high-performance engine, it may come as a surprise to many that I own an electric car.
Similarly, despite specifically working in data roles for decades, where addressable data, cookie-driven solutions, and logged-in information dominated my experiences; I’m now embracing solutions that are identity-less and modeled.
So, here are the parallels between both:
Both the Cookieless Future and the Electric Future are well and truly textbook examples of the change cycle. For years, we’ve been stuck in the denial and anger/fear phase of these transitions, as evidenced by the press cycles and attitudes toward doing things differently. From discussions on range anxiety and how flammable EVs are, to how accurate targeting is going to be to how little money publishers are going to make from non-cookie-driven solutions; the representative press in each industry is awash with negative sentiment.
To get to the acceptance (and even commitment to a different future), it’s important that we ignore the noise and focus on the positives. Why, you might ask? Surely if we bleat and moan enough about a future that is different we can avoid this change. The problem with this is that in both cases, change is inevitable. One driven by regulation and change in consumer privacy, one by regulation and change in environmental efforts and sustainability.
I’m here to tell you that things aren’t that bad. My electric car is amazing to drive; smooth and obscenely fast. I never leave home without a full ‘tank’ (tell me you haven’t tried to get to work without going to get fuel) and the price per mile is 1/10th of that of an equivalently powered petrol engine.
Drawing comparisons, and contrary to popular opinion, advertising solutions without cookies actually deliver fantastic results. Working here at Teads, we’ve seen audiences deliver better results (from media KPIs to brand lift studies), delivering scaled solutions to marketers across all inventory types (especially those that have been cookieless for years, like Safari).
As we [the advertising industry] march towards a cookieless future, we can’t remain stuck in the denial and fear phase. With eMarketer reporting that in Q4 2023, only 17% of programmatic spend for the automotive industry was cookieless, it would suggest that there is a significant change still needed within the media buying representative for the vertical.
Meanwhile, automotive advertisers working with Teads delivered 69% of their media spend using cookieless signals in Q1 2024.
Teads crafts sustainable, cookieless solutions that respect consumer privacy and can be applied across all screens. Auto clients adopting these solutions are discovering exceptional results.
With consumer privacy at the heart of all of this upheaval, it’s fair to say that we can’t turn back time so we only have one choice and that’s to move forward. For those early adopters, they’ve found their experiences aren’t what they thought, and for many, cookie vs. cookieless is a language of old.
So, it’s time to embrace this change and you never know, your journey could be smooth, fast and [without starting an argument] better for consumers and better for the environment!
To learn more about how auto consumers shop today, download our Shifting Gears study.
Written by James Colborn, Global VP of Data