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About this episode:

In this episode of “About That,” Carl Mayer interviews Michael Dobson, our Global Chief Digital Officer, about the evolving landscape of advertising cookies and Google’s recent changes to their policies.

Interested in hearing more from Michael about this topic? View his article: Google + Third-Party Cookies: The Cookie That Never Fully Crumbles

About Michael Dobson:

Michael Dobson is Global Chief Digital Officer at Active International and Involved Media, Active’s full-service, global media agency. Michael brings a wealth of knowledge and skill to the team, with both agency and client-side experience implementing marketing initiatives. As our digital practice lead, Michael sorts out the signals from the noise, to build repeatable results-driven media campaigns.

Prior to joining Active and Involved Media, Michael led teams in social media, programmatic, search, and influencer space, focusing on strategy and media buying to produce successful business outcomes. Michael’s previous responsibilities include digital media leadership roles at Horizon, Crossmedia, Media Assembly and Michael’s Inc. Michael currently lives in New York City with his partner and two pups.

Transcript:

Carl Mayer: Welcome to About That. I’m Carl Mayer here in the offices of Involved Media in New York City. I’m joined today by Michael Dobson, our Global Chief Digital Officer. Michael heads up a team of thought leaders for the industry, and he’s going to help make sense of our topic for the day, which is advertising cookies and, specifically, some changes that Google recently announced. Michael, welcome to About That.

Michael Dobson:  Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Mayer: I think at this point everybody kind of has an idea of what advertising cookies are, how they work, their purpose. But just to level set, can you give a quick explanation?

Dobson: Yeah, absolutely.  So everything you do online, from website applications you use, things you’re looking at, things you’re buying, all of that is building up as data based off of 1st party cookies is really what it’s referenced as.

One of the analogies I like to use is whenever you go to a conference and you as a visitor at a conference, you usually have a name badge.  You’ll have a title and your company and all of that’s actually formed based off of whoever’s hosting the conference, which that’s then looked at as first-party data and a cookie that’s based off of that.

As you go around to the conference, you go to different vendors, you go to different meetings, then it builds out for potentially third-party data as well that builds off of your cookies as well.  So all of that’s really forming and showing as a consumer or user, who you are and what you’re doing online.

If you were to put that in it, you know, the same context as websites and applications.

Mayer: And as useful as the cookies are. Still, in 2020, Google decided they were going to phase them out. Why was that?

Dobson: Ultimately, it comes down to data privacy and compliance, as we’ve seen globally, you know, in other countries where things have become very restricted or potentially were never allowed, in the states specifically, things have become more scrutinized for the protection of your data as a consumer, and to make sure that those who are using the data as advertisers or brands are using it in a compliant way.

Mayer: Despite all of the security concerns, all the privacy concerns, late last month, Google announced maybe we’re not going to phase them out entirely. Why that change?

Dobson: Yeah, So the deprecation of cookies, you know, years ago, 2020, you know, there was a lot of different platforms, Google being one that had to really assess how are we using this data moving forward, how are we going to restrict things? And the deprecation of that, as you mentioned, has been pulled back, and they’re no longer saying, well, we’re not going to deprecate them, but we’re not going to necessarily provide them fully.

So they, Google has, you know, their Google Privacy Sandbox initiatives and part of that now they’re going to roll out where they’re giving the user more options of actually opting in or opting out of what you want to share. So you as a consumer can say, I want to share these three things, but these other five things I don’t potentially.  Now the breakout of that is to be determined still and how it’s actually going to be.

The five examples is just an example, but you’ll be able to control those variables of what you want to share within your behaviors that are really your cookies that are being passed along as data.

Mayer: If users have the ability to decide what they’re going to share if they’re going to share at all, presumably that means less information for advertisers. How can they work around that?

Dobson: The nice part that this has taken so long is that it’s given brands and agencies the ability to build things out over time. So for the last several years, many brands and agencies and those who need the data have been collecting first-party data to make sure that they’re maximizing that finding relationships with third-party data providers that make sense for their business.

Where you may be a CPG brand, but you don’t necessarily get first-party data, but you get consumer, you know, credit card information and purchase behavior to be able to actually, you know, utilize that to your benefit. With those things in mind, brands have been able to prepare in that way as well as to look at performance whenever it’s more performance driven of what is actually being impacted when you cut back on that data use.

So when Meta rolled out, you know, their compliance and a lot of their data that was being restricted, you were able to then see what was the drop off before to what it is now. If it was a 20% delta or if it was more or less.

Mayer: The advertisers aren’t advertising just because they want to advertise and they think it’s fun. It’s, you know, they want sales, and sales become more challenging if the trust isn’t fully there between the brand and the consumer. With all of this focus on privacy concerns and sort of the Big Brothers watching of it all, what can advertisers do to restore that connection and that trust?

Dobson:  Yeah, I think that knowledge and compliance is huge, right? So making sure that as a brand you’re actually being compliant and, you know, meeting those expectations and sharing with the consumer what you are sharing or are utilizing as their data and sharing, you know, and passing that through. How are you utilizing the data about me as a consumer to reach me with the right relevant messages that would be, you know, fair if I want to get relevant messages? And then making sure that they’re also sharing the ability of how they can opt-in and opt-out?

It’s not only on Google necessarily, but also for brands to be able to give a selection process similar to what Google is laying out of how often do you want communications? What do you want communications on? Do you want to see things regularly, monthly, whatever that may be? So I think it’s really building that relationship and the ability of making sure that the consumer understands where they have control and it helps build the trust over time.

Mayer: Now, this is even for the digital space, which is always changing. This is a very quickly, rapidly changing area, has the potential to be very confusing. So thank you for coming on today and helping to sort of cut through everything and make sense of it. I really appreciate it.

Dobson: Thank you.

Mayer: And if you’d like to learn more about Michael’s POV on this topic, you can click the link that accompanies this video. Michael, thanks again for being here on About That and thank you. We’ll see you next time.