Google Calls Time on Outsider Treats 

Google has declared designs to altogether "eliminate" outsider treats in Chrome inside two years


While Facebook has been the lightning pole for negative headlines regarding security breaches and surreptitious information sharing, Google has had serious problems of its own. Chiefly, a $57M fine for falling afoul of GDPR legislation, information leaks that signaled the end for its lead social network, and clandestine location following of iPhone users — all heavily contributing to deteriorating consumer trust and the readiness for sweeping security legislation.

The aggressive timeline set out by Google is certain to see Firefox and Safari et al. scramble to stick to this same pattern, as no one needs to be known as the browser that doesn't value the security of its users.

In spite of the fact that Google's protection rotate is a success for security conscious consumers, it's a headache for marketers wedded to outsider cookies to power their advertising, just as perpetuating Google's enemy of competitive walled garden. These sweeping changes to the martech and adtech industries reinforce the need for marketers to move to a first-and zero-party information strategy to power their advertising and marketing initiatives. Hence P&G, responsible for the second largest advertising budget in the US is pulling all promotion spend from the walled gardens and moving to a zero-party information strategy. The cookie is genuinely disintegrating.

The zero-party information solution

In the post-Cambridge Analytica and protection legislation era, zero-party information is the next step in rebuilding trust and engendering enduring and meaningful connections with consumers. A class of preference information that a consumer proactively and intentionally shares with a brand to improve personalization — never collected by cookie following.

Zero-party information empowers marketers to get ahead of these inevitable changes and fabricate direct relationships with consumers, including their competitor's customers, to better personalize their item recommendations, services, and content.

As this preference information comes directly from the consumer, there are no intermediaries and no guesswork — it's psychographic information that includes your customers' values, attitudes, interests and personality traits.

The value exchange economy

The utopia described above comes with a caveat. Consumers won't hand over their personal and preference information in vain. You need to offer a tangible value exchange.

To collect the information required to power true personalization, consumers need to be entertained, engaged, and receive something in return for their attention and preference information. Marketers can deliver this through interactive experiences that conduct research, accrue pick ins, and deliver an altogether better experience for the consumer.

Questionnaires, surveys, quizzes, contests, or social stories can incorporate reward mechanics that give consumers a genuine reason to engage and submit their first-and zero-party information. And it doesn't generally have to be a markdown or red-letter prize; exclusive content, access to live events, social praise, personalized recommendations, and reliability rewards can likewise be the impetus for the collection of select ins and zero-party information collection.

Catching consumer motivations, intentions, interests, and preferences at scale allows for a genuinely personalized customer experience and helps marketers eschew the walled gardens and the "cookiepocolypse."