Brands Urged to Prepare for Post-cookie Advertising

By Raheem Akingbolu

As the online advertising industry counts down to the total extinction of third-party cookies, online advertisers and digital marketers have been urged to test new solutions now rather than later.

This was the advice of experts that spoke at a recent webinar organised by Terragon Limited in conjunction with Facebook.

The Webinar which was titled: ‘Online Advertising in a Post-Cookie World: Delivering Personalised Ads using the Terragon CDP and Facebook Conversions API,’ had almost 300 sign-ups from industry leaders and practitioners from leading FMCG, Telcos, Banks and E-Commerce brands across Africa.
Speaking at the event, a Marketing Strategy and Tech Consultant at PwC, Chris Humphery, noted that brands must invest in data and technology to prepare adequately for the post-cookie world.

“To test and learn is not to move fast and fail, it is about moving fast and building things. It’s about understanding what data and technology can expand into the marketing technology space and potentially adding to that MarTech space to drive through the greater ability to execution.”

Buttressing the same point, Head Digital Marketing, Africa at PZ Cussons, Dayo Adefila, advised against a fire-brigade approach to online advertising in a post-cookie world.

“Test and begin. Don’t wait till October, November. Start getting to see how you can take advantage of Facebook’s Conversions API and look at the right CDP. Terragon has something that is really customised for Africa because it is mobile-first and it has mobile reach.”

Acknowledging the potential disruptions to online advertising that the extinction of third-party cookies will cause, the speakers called for re-strategising and investment in customer data.

“What advertisers really need to do is to rethink their approach to customer data. Ultimately, by doing that, they will reduce their reliance on the third-party cookies.” Chris Humphrey noted.

“The role of a CDP (Customer Data Platform) will become very important in a post-cookie world and particularly API into each of the Walled Gardens. The challenge that we as advertisers will have is getting the level of data back from those Walled Gardens,” he added

On his part, Dayo Adefila highlighted the importance of re-strategising in order for advertisers to meet their KPIs.

“There’s a brave new world that is not waiting. At the end of the day you don’t want to be spending money without achieving key results.”

“Customer Relationship Management is required to help get better first-party data and to understand what is important to your customers,” he said.

Introducing the Facebook Conversions API, a solution to help brands prepare for the post-cookie world, Emily Wilson, a Marketing product and Partnership Manager at Facebook discussed the importance of personalisation to consumers and how Facebook’s solution can help brands.