Is India already a major cookieless market?

This year an increasing number or brands have tested cookieless solutions in an effort to future-proof their targeting effectiveness for the post cookie-era. Industry leaders are now focusing on how this can be effectively used in our media strategies in India.

Cookieless preparations still played a small role in the day to day of media planners across the Asia Pacific in 2021. However, driven by browser, in-app and legal changes, already around 45% of web traffic in the region, including Japan, is not using 3rd party cookies anymore.

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In India where 3rd party cookies can still reach most users it is mostly global advertiser who are already moving away from traditional audience segments, while media agencies typically like to continue to rely on traditional 3p audience segments for their planning.

It is difficult to measure the precise number of cookieless users In India, but even conservative estimates based on browser market share suggest India is already a major cookieless market in terms of absolute users. According to Statista the cookielsss browsers Safari, Firefox and Microsoft Edge have a combined market share of 5.1%. (Statista Nov’21) Against a base of 825M (Statista Nov’21) internet users or open web readers 468M (Comscore Nov’21) a cookieless user estimate ranges between 24M to 42M users. On the other hand, Singapore’s 2.5M cookieless user pale in comparison. However, just like in the wealthy country, Indian cookieless audiences represent some of the market’s most valuable and relevant consumers for premium brands.

While the number of cookieless users in India is expected to grow even more this year, Teads data suggests India may already be APAC’s number one cookieless market today. An analysis of Teads inventory shows 12% (and growing) of open web in India traffic is already cookieless. As many as 51.2M online users may already not be addressable with 3rd party cookies anymore, which would make it the leading cookieless market in the entire APAC region before Japan with an estimated 48M cookieless users.

Regardless of which estimate planners rely on, the upcoming 3rd party cookie depreciation in Google’s Chrome browser in announced for 2023, means it is only a matter of time before India will indeed become the No 1 Cookieless market in Asia.

Why choose Teads to go Cookieless ?

Many of our clients who test Teads cookieless suite for the first time are surprised to learn cookieless targeting is not only about future-proofing, but just as much about realizing potential for optimization and cost savings by regaining access to relevant audiences in cookieless inventories.

Teads reaches over 90% of open web users in India (ComScore 07.2021) and through these premium publisher partnerships we are also able to understand content consumption of online readers in the market. This ability puts Teads in a unique position to deliver non-intrusive personalization and optimize campaigns in identifier free inventories.

However, most importantly we made cookieless solutions accessible for our agency and advertiser partners, by introducing a new ‘Cookieless Mode’ in our buying interface Teads Ad Manager. Having the ability to cover the entire marketing cycle cookieless in an easy and transparent way is what gives advertisers the confidence to start testing.

In 2021 we planned tests with over a dozen of advertisers in APAC and measured the effectiveness of our cookiless solutions by running brand uplift studies and using standard media KPIs such as view-through-rate or in-view-time. The results are equivalent or even better the cookie based targeting. This might seem surprising, but unlike cookie-based audiences, cookieless is about user interests in real time and finding that right moment is a key factor in driving higher attention, engagement and therefore media effectiveness. Teads AI has proven its ability to optimize campaign performance without the need for cookies.

Teads Ad Manager: The Cookieless Platform

Getting started isn’t hard. Our data solutions are seamlessly integrated into Teads Ad Manager and make it easy to set up A/B tests with just a few clicks.

In the platform clients can access sustainable audiences and advanced contextual targeting as well tools for planning and activation such as our latest release the Teads Cookieless Translator.

Standard targeting options such as demographic or interest-audiences are available from our off-the-shelf catalogue of over 100 Teads cookieless audiences. On the back-end these audiences smartly combine our Teads predictive AI targeting with the latest cookieless initiatives from the industry.

To go even further and make custom targeting and advertiser 1st-party data actionable in cookieless environments Teads has developed an innovative new tool: the Teads Cookieless Translator.

Within the translator, the online attributes of cookie-based audience can be analyzed and based on these profiles and the most relevant cookieless signal combinations, like content, websites or device, are provided as a cookieless audience recommendation.

In adddion, Teads offers a catalogue of over 500 different contextual topic categories created with the help of semantic analysis that achieves a deep understanding of each page.

Contextual targeting has a clear value as it all about reaching consumers in the exact moment when they are most receptive to a fitting marketing message. In combination with Teads inRead placement, located in the heart of editorial content, our contextual solution is both the right placement at the right moment to amplify user attention.

Teads cookieless test in 2021 have proven that online marketing campaigns can deliver media effectiveness without 3rd party cookies and we encourage everyone to start testing today by simply using our self-serve interface Teads Ad Manager, the first cookieless platform for the open-web.