Cookieless future is here & Now – How geared are advertisers to adapt to it?

The “cookieless future” can be bright for advertisers, publishers, and consumers, but it will be grim indeed for ad tech vendors that had been profiting off of the data collected from users, diverting ad revenue away from good publishers to themselves, and selling snake oil to advertisers – this harsh commentary came from industry leaders while discussing ‘Cookieless future is here & Now – How geared are advertisers to adapt to it?’

The discussion came up during the 6th edition of DIGIXX Summit & Awards 2022, the flagship event of Adgully/ Moderated by Sindhu Biswal, Head of Growth, betterhalf.ai, the panelists included:

Anjali Malthankar, National Strategy Director, Tonic Worldwide

Gaurav Nijhawan, Vice President - Marketing, Stashfin

Mihir Palan, VP - Media, Kinnect

At the outset, Sindhu Biswal asked the panelists, “How do you think the whole space has changed and how are brands changing, specifically in terms of First-Party Data tracking?”

Gaurav Nijhawan responded by saying, “First party cookies tell you about your users’ behaviour. Therefore, it’s not really cookieless, but less cookies. Our omni-channel approach needs to be looked at with more focus.”

According to Anjali Malthankar, “How the consumer is really going to deal with this change is also very important. The way we look at this whole thing is as a challenge or an opportunity. We are assuming that the consumers are not comfortable with sharing their data. What they expect is that their consent is sought first. If brands do that then it will increase the trust quotient in brands and consumers will be willing to share data on specific things.”

These are edited excerpts. For the complete discussion, please watch below: