The Tide Turns, Solidifying the Path to Personalization

Tim: Well, the month of May was great for the modern marketer, including some Ad Age covers this month. One read, " Marketing might be better off without cookies," and I'll tell you, we agree. In fact, we've been saying it for years. But let's dig in to some of the history. And to kick it off, I'm going to read here right from the cover of Ad Age, May 3: First party plays. Driven by the transition to a cookieless future, brands are upgrading loyalty programs, launching customer data platforms, and tackling the new complexity of building customer personas.

Rich: Wait, wait, wait, wait. So, launching customer data platforms?

Tim: Mm- hmm(affirmative).

Rich: Loyalty programs?

Tim: You got it.

Rich: And dealing with the complexity of building out consumer personas in this new age of privacy, read: zero- party data?

Tim: Yep.

Rich: That's basically everything we've been saying to them for a while now.

Tim: Yeah, well, look. If you want to go back on the record, Rich... and I know you do keep tabs... we have been saying all of this for a while.

Rich: Well, I do have a history degree, so.

Tim: So, yeah. But furthermore, look. We've partnered with Ad Age. We're already getting ahead of this. And we have a white paper coming out in early June, and I wanted to give you a little bit of a teaser on that because our rabid, loyal fan base here at Thinking Caps needs to get this into their hands first.

Rich: All three of them. Thank you very much.

Tim: Hey now. We got an email request when we were doing merch the other day, so we'll start the KISS Army version of Thinking Caps. But the idea is, we went to Ad Age a few months ago. We're already ahead of this. Media publishers covering these topics, that's great. We love to see that. But we've been pounding this for... Rich, you and I even before joining Cheetah, we've been doing this for a long time.

Rich: Oh, yeah. Let's take a quick look at this. Right? Third- party cookies were given the death sentence in 2020.

Tim: Yep. Right.

Rich: Panic ensues, I think it's fair to say in many parts of the ad tech world, as they're scrambling looking for alternatives. A lot of that scrambling is still going on. Right? We're in a live moment of people trying to look at, what are the alternatives?

Tim: Yeah.

Rich: Or are there alternatives?

Tim: Yep.

Rich: Then we've seen publishers have really started to ramp up coverage about the death of the third- party cookie and privacy disruption, which is great. That's really been kicking off. The coverage in 2021 alone is better and more... richer than it was in 2020.

Tim: Absolutely, so far this year.

Rich: We predicted all of that. We've been talking about this for a while. But we've been talking about this professionally and personally for five- plus years. And when we first started talking about this, we just hadn't had a Cambridge Analytica scandal type moment that really brought the abuses of what was going on around privacy and the lack of data controls to the forefront of people's agendas, both politically in the marketing space as well as consumer attitudes. So, this is has been a long time coming. And ultimately we're here to help marketers paint a different future that's based around a transparent engagement with consumers over their data and that drives better personalization than was possible in a cookie- driven world. But let's digress away from the history lesson for a while. The point is, we know what was happening, and it's really important that marketers start to think about and listen to, what are the options for what comes next.

Tim: Yeah. Good news is, this white paper in conjunction with an asset we already launched earlier this year, literally those two assets are going to be your blueprint to the future. I want to talk a little bit about what's coming in this, what we are titling right now the Path to Personalization white paper, as commissioned with Ad Age's custom content team. Essentially we went and polled brand marketers. We said, hey, on a few different topics, some of which being, do you even understand what zero- party data is? I'm not going to reveal the stat yet, but I think you'll be surprised. And if you're sitting there scratching your head going, " Well, you know, I didn't know about it until just recently," don't worry. There are a lot of people out there that don't even know what zero- party data is. Secondly, we asked them, not only in that knowledge gap, do you have the technology, the knowledge, the skill set to a) collect zero- party data, understand it, analyze it, and then activate it... Do you have the technology to do this? In fact, Rich, we know that personalization's big because consumers are saying that it's big. I think it was 66% said ads based on cookies tracking their behavior, snooping, the creepy factor, was indeed creepy. However, 73% said that personalized offers based on previous purchases were actually cool. So we know that personalization is the path forward and it's-

Rich: It's just how you do it.

Tim: Exactly. Right? Transparency. This paper, it's going to be filled with stats galore. We also asked things like, where are you struggling? How are you struggling? Do you plan to phase out third- party cookies entirely? Somewhat? A ton? So this white paper is going to be something you're going to want mainly to gauge, where do you sit? You know your organization, zero- party data, silos of data, et cetera. You're basically going to be able to measure yourself against the rest of the marketing world.

Rich: And that's important. It's interesting. The IAB has recognized in their 2021 Digital Ad Ecosystem report that the greatest and most immediate threat to growth of the digital advertising supported ecosystem is inaction by the key players.

Tim: Yes.

Rich: And inaction is definitely something that I think we all have to be worried about, because we've gone past the point of return.

Tim: Yeah.

Rich: iOS 14. 5 is being rolled out. Consumers are piling onto that every week. That's obviously having a big impact on some of these privacy measures. So it's really time to move. And if the IAB labels this inaction as potentially lethal for some advertisers-

Tim: Lethal. That's the word they used. Lethal.

Rich: Yeah, lethal. For both advertisers and ad tech players. So it's really important that we know how to navigate this new landscape, that we've got the tools to personalize messages, content, experiences, and ads with our consumers. And this is the language that powers a customer engagement strategy.

Tim: Absolutely. So look, I'm excited to launch this thing. It's going to launch on June 7. There, you heard it right from me.

Rich: There you go.

Tim: It's coming June 7, and there's a great way to get it. But I want to tell you again some of the things that are in here, because right now if you don't know what to do or you don't know how to collect zero- party data, we give you great examples. There's quite a few named global companies that are named in this white paper, challenge, solution, results. So again, real rubber- meet- the- road content there to get you going. That is what you're going to get. And do you want to know how do you get it?

Rich: Go for it.

Tim: Would you be interested?

Rich: How do I get it?

Tim: I'm going to tell you how to get it. I created this QR code. That QR code will take you to our 2021 Consumer Trends Index report that Richard just mentioned. You are absolutely going to need that report. So what we want you to do is make sure you have that report. If you've already downloaded it, you're good to go. Watch your inbox. If you have not, get it now. Hit that QR code. It's on cheetahdigital. com. Download that report and you will be one of the first to be alerted via email that the white paper with Ad Age is available.

Rich: Fantastic. Look, and these are two of the most important reports I think you can get your hands on this year. It's questions about, where are you going to put your energy? How are you going to achieve your marketing results? The 2021 Consumer Trend Index report will tell you exactly what the global consumer expects. You've got that data at your fingertips. That'll help you look at strategy from privacy to personalization and loyalty, both the assets, the marketer's view and the consumer view, and then seeing the disparity. That's where we need to focus our efforts.

Tim: Totally. It's a blueprint. Those two things together. And we have even more. You just did a great interview in Palo Alto last week-

Rich: I did.

Tim: ...that I'm also excited to launch probably in early June. We don't have the particulars there, but maybe you want to tease it. I don't know. We have less than a minute.

Rich: I'll just say, not often you get to do an interview in a$ 100 million house with a CEO that really is one of the best people I've ever talked to in terms of the historical connection they have to conceiving, executing, rolling out loyalty programs, going back into the last millennium.

Tim: Yeah, he's decades deep, so some really, really cool stuff there. That's in edit. That's coming your way. Cool. This is a teaser for the white paper. Go get the Consumer Trends Index, and you'll get an email letting you know when that white paper's launched June 7.

Rich: June 7. See you soon.

Tim: Adios.