Industry experts highlight the need to focus on first-party data
At the e4m-Xaxis programmatic summit, a panel of industry heads came together to share insights on the topic - Death of cookies: A threat to programmatic
Industry leaders came together at the e4m-Xaxis programmatic summit to share insights ‘Death of cookies: A threat to programmatic’. With the recent announcement by Google to replicate the cookies soon, the panellists were requested to give some insights on how would businesses work without cookies in the coming years.
Session Chair Bharat Arora began the session by mentioning the recent announcement by Google to replicate the cookies soon and how would businesses work without cookies in the coming years.
Punit Chahar, Asia Head of Digital Performance Marketing, Olx Autos, said, “Cookie was invented keeping in mind that if I could track the user activities then I could give a better user experience. The life of marketers changed in 1994 because before that there was nothing. It is not a third-party cookie that is going to stop, but how it is going to affect you as a digital marketer. Your advertising accounts, around 70% to 80% of remarketing are from a third party, and next year there will be no third party.”
Discussing the importance of first-party data in the marketing industry, Ketan Bharati, VP - of Global Marketing Operations, at Truecaller, said, “The first-party data is a gold mine and the more we dive into it, the better we could retarget our audience. Presently brands like Amazon and Netflix are investing a lot of time in collecting first-party data.” He further mentioned that Truecaller recently launched a campaign in tier 2 and 3 markets and they got a good engagement rate and collected a lot of first-party data.
Taking the discussion forward, Bharat Arora, asked how technology can fill in once cookies no longer exist. On the other hand, Nachiket Deole, Head of Sales, India at Double Verify, said, “We need to start thinking about the cookie's strategies. A lot of research has to be done on data segments - whether those data segments are reliant or not on cookies. Are there take options available that we can feed into our tech stack, which takes care of GDPR, which takes care of user interest, and user privacy and can we use those data points, use those companies to start reading our tech stacks and feeding data?”
Furthermore, discussing how to maintain a balance between customer privacy and marketers accessing the data through cookies, Gagan Singla, Managing Director- Digital Business- JM Financial, said, “In terms of privacy, I guess I don't think there is a balance, to be honest. Because even today, wherever there is privacy to be respected is being respected, where does not respect, it is not respected.”
Panellists also shared strategies on how to boost the third-party data to increase an overall engagement, traffic and conversion ratio, Angsuman Gogoi, Digital Marketing Lead, Glenmark Consumer Care, said, “If I look at first-party data from the bottom bundle perspective, definitely there will be some challenges that we'll have to cater to. The other most important point is contextual targeting which will become the game changer in the coming years.”
Concluding the session, Bharat pointed out the need for more democracy in the data-accessing world to protect the interests of marketers and consumers. Making the data accessing system more flexible and individualistic will help in catering to the needs of both marketers and customers, he said.
The event is co-powered by Scibids while Xapads is the innovation partner. Lemma is the programmatic partner and Aaj Tak is the co-gold partner of the event. Bobble AI is the co-partner of the event.
