A recent article in The Drum by Damon Reeve, CEO of Ozone, articulated a theme which has been core to our founding story at AUDIENCES. Reeve incisively makes the case that with it's changes to Chrome, 'Google is driving the digital change that GDPR couldn't'.
We had long recognised that the building consumer activism around the use of data in advertising had still delivered little meaningful change. Regulation on both sides of the Atlantic in the shape of GDPR & CCPA whilst creating a lot of noise in their policy making, launch and enforcement, had not changed how media was bought and sold. As Reeve states, "while GDPR was annoying, it wasn’t the forcing function for change'. And whilst the promise of 1st party data driven advertising had always been present, up to this point advertisers had little meaningful reason to change about how they went to market.
Chrome’s decision to end the third-party cookie is a different kind of catalyst. Change is now coming, and it feels final, Damon Reeve, Ozone
In June 2021 Google made it's initial & clear statements about how Chrome would handle 3rd party cookies in future, joining Apple and Webkit in implementing increasingly privacy friendly approaches. The writing was on the wall for 3rd party cookies, categories of 1st party cookies and broader tracking methodologies. Across the industry significant attention shifted to how to leverage 1st party customer data in advertising and it was at this point that we believed advertisers had a problem worth solving and we sought to bring AUDIENCES to market.
Reeve further explores the impact on publishers, where many have already taken steps to protect and grow their propositions but also where change is further required. The power of walled gardens such as Google & Meta continues to rise as the open web evolves and traditional publishers are feeling pressure from all angles.
Leading advertisers are already using AUDIENCES to accelerate activation of 1st party data across advertising with zero compromise to privacy or security.
Contact AUDIENCES to discuss how to accelerate activation of your 1st party data.