Cross-channel and cookieless: How measurement will progress in 2021

The role of audience fragmentation, the deprecation of third-party cookies, customer personal privacy, and walled gardens in future measurement solutions.

30-second summary:

The pandemic has caused major shifts in the manner in which advertisers operate, making it more critical than ever to be able to prove ROI and make every advertisement dollar count

The failure to track reach and frequency is one of the greatest problems with cross-platform advertisement measurement that marketers deal with

As marketers get in the brand-new year, they will require to have measurement services in location that account for cross-channel, cookieless, privacy, and walled gardens

Early adopters of cross-channel measurement, truly cookieless solutions, privacy, and consumer-centric policies, and data partnership will gain insights required to make sure future success

Marketers have faced an amazing variety of challenges over the previous year. The death of third-party cookies, the loss of device identifiers, and evolving privacy regulations have actually required the market to come up with new services for identity. With customer habits moving quickly and market volatility anticipated to continue this year, showing ROI with precise measurement will be more vital than ever. Half of U.S. marketers say the failure to track reach and frequency is still among the greatest issues with cross-channel advertisement measurement. Better measurement services are required.

Marketers require to make the effort now to evaluate their measurement options in order to ensure every dollar spent has a purpose. Online marketers ought to try to find options that overcome measurement challenges and form a single view of the customer journey. Just then can they genuinely enhance the consumer experience by providing customized messages and offerings based upon insights gleaned. In 2021, measurement services will evolve and enhance to represent cross-platform, cookieless, customer openness, and walled gardens.

Cross-platform measurement will make it possible for versatility and control for TV and other mediums

Recent trends indicate that consumers are buying multiple streaming services and cutting the cable at a worrying rate. As consumer habits and viewer fragmentation throughout a variety of digital mediums and streaming platforms accelerate, it is very important for advertisers to determine cross-platform reach and frequency in real-time and change course quickly if needed. This is almost impossible to do using conventional TELEVISION metrics.

To determine where and how to best reach the consumer, measurement offerings must record cross-channel metrics and stabilize disparate data sets to much better comprehend the real viewer. For instance, one spouse might be responsible for all the streaming memberships in a family while another handles cable and internet. To even more puzzle the issue, their online and offline purchases may be similarly combined.

With more precise cross-screen metrics and measurement tools, consisting of effect and reach, advertisers can track invest against particular KPIs to identify true ROI within a set audience. As advertisers and distribution players adopt new measurement options in 2021 and report these metrics more accurately, the market will be required to accept flexibility in locations that have traditionally lacked dexterity and needed firm budget dedications.

More precise measurement provides advertisers key insights that need versatility for optimizations and the requirement for more real-time control with TV and premium video. Measurement offerings that record metrics across OTT and direct and link impact to real results will take center stage in the new year as advertisers are required to prove ROI and can no longer count on traditional TELEVISION metrics.

The deprecation of third-party cookies acts as a catalyst to better measurement

With less than a year before Google pulls the plug on third-party cookies and the simultaneous limitations placed on certain mobile identifiers such as IDFAs, the advertising environment is reacting with a flurry of identifiers of their own. Despite this, the industry has yet to develop a requirement for a universal way to determine reach without cookies, producing confusion in the marketplace and strengthening the requirement for safe and secure, privacy-conscious, and interoperable identity options that preserve neutrality.

Projects using people-based identifiers rooted in verified user data perform better across key metrics such as return on advertisement spend, cost per view, and cost per mille. In fact, specific kinds of cookieless solutions make it much easier to determine outcomes and prove ROI. Campaigns will be people-based and almost 100 percent addressable-- permitting marketers and publishers to uncover undervalued inventory and see an improvement in their overall performance.

The industry is working diligently to develop a much better environment-- one with trust and transparency-- that isn't reliant on unsteady identifiers like third-party cookies. A stronger, trusted environment will guarantee marketers can determine across all customer touchpoints long after the third-party cookie vanishes. This assists to make sure the most relevant, tailored messages reach customers across channels-- which eventually results in an increase in brand loyalty that will assist strengthen companies and enhance results for online marketers and publishers alike in the post-cookie world.

Measurement develops with personal privacy at its core

As personal privacy policy continues to progress, our industry faces a complex challenge-- regaining customer trust. There's a conscious effort and pattern towards consumer openness, and that's not going away. Hence, in addition to adhering to the law, advertisers are updating their policies to make sure transparency about how customer information is being used. We need to do a better job of discussing that the data people share belongs to an equally beneficial worth exchange that's necessary to developing services and products that serve customers much better.

As customers engage throughout media-- they opt-in, log-in, subscribe-- and identify themselves in different ways. This information can be used to build and scale the best audiences and enhance measurement to better under which tactics are moving the needle on company outcomes. Marketers should just utilize measurement solutions with privacy at the core to make sure the delivery of a smooth customer experience on the individual's terms.

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One example of where measurement is headed is LiveRamp's integration with Google's Advertisements Information Hub. This approach enables first-party data linkage to Google data within the ADH environment in a privacy-first method. An individual's data can not be straight viewed, edited, or controlled in ADH, however actionable insights can be drawn out.

Amazon sets the bar when it comes to understanding and determining the customer purchasing journey and then carrying out against that information. Marketers are aiming to produce that type of measurement engine, without moving information or consisting of privacy, that will form information partnerships to fill out the gaps in their line of sight, leveraging data from outside their four walls to measure the consumer journey along with all endpoints.

The industry will accept data cooperation to improve measurement

Walled gardens provide a prime example of how access to data at every point along the consumer journey opens measurement of the entire consumer experience. Following this example, consumer brands will look for to construct a strong information foundation to form a unified view of the consumer, then to optimize marketing touchpoints as part of the larger enhancement to the consumer experience. We're seeing CPG brand names analyzing sales lift by comparing data from retail partners to understand the holistic shopping journey of each customer.

As The Winterberry Group found in their January 2021 report 'Collaborative Data Solutions', among the locations with the best adoption today is for insight and analysis. Data collaboration will just become more vital as marketers aim to measure results and enhance budgets. With the right privacy-conscious structures in place, information science Discover more and analytics groups will be able to work across information sets, accelerate analysis, and create a level of insight that is much deeper than ever before.

Conclusion

After the year we had, development in measurement looms. In what will likely be another financially-difficult year, proving return on advertising investment will be the driving force behind this progression to more responsible metrics delivered with more speed.

Early adopters of cross-platform measurement, genuinely cookieless options, privacy and consumer-centric policies, and information collaboration will provide customers with the best in class experience today and expose insights required to make sure future success.

Matthew Emans is VP of Measurement Products for LiveRamp, and the co-founder/CTO of Information Plus Mathematics, gotten by LiveRamp in 2019.