A Cookieless Future

[Background Music] You've likely heard the phrase the only thing constant in marketing is change. The most recent marketing news sheds light on a change finally coming to fruition. Hey, guys, This is Chelsea Redinger, director of media here at Click Rain. For the last two years, we've been hearing all about Google's plan to remove third-party cookies in Chrome. As of January four, approximately 1% of randomly selected global users are now a part of Google Chrome's cookieless test. It's important to understand what a third-party cookie is in order to really understand the impact of this change. A third-party cookie is most commonly used to track a user's online behavior as they move from one website to the other. All of this data is then stored at the browser level. Historically, for the last several decades, actually, third-party cookies have been the primary method used to target and to serve personalized and relevant ads to consumers. You might be asking, okay, so what does this mean now? Well, if anyone else is having deja vu like me, we've actually seen this done before with Safari's removal of third-party cookie tracking in 2022 and Firefox being the earliest adopter in 2019. While Google Chrome is the last browser to make the cookieless shift by default, they also account for nearly 50% of browser usage in the U.S. making this change, the most impactful on our advertising industry to date. Luckily for us, we've known this was coming with a looming date. Click Rain has been actively working behind the scenes with our top partners who have developed and already implemented cookieless targeting technology. So what's next? If we've learned anything in the last couple of years, we know that consumer privacy will continue to be a topic of interest and focus in the marketing realm. An emphasis on first-party data collection and usage will be more of a focus than ever before. If you visited a new website recently, you've likely seen a prompt to accept all cookies. This is a prime example of first-party data collection and practice. Unlike third-party cookies, first-party cookies are here to stay, which is great news for us. Are you interested in learning more? Join us at our upcoming event, Trendigital. Together, we'll explore the latest updates, learn how to harness the power of first party data, we'll dive into discovery and channels that really thrive without cookies, and gain insight into optimizing your marketing strategy for the cookieless future. Get your tickets today and we'll see you there. [Music]