It’s hard to imagine a world without cookies.
But for online advertising, that world is fast approaching… and marketers need to start preparing for a strict no-cookie diet.
We recommend building your audience in two ways:
- Squeezing every last drop from third-party tracking before it sunsets completely.
- Importing first-party data to your PPC advertising platforms.
Already done that? Good.
Now it’s time to start expanding your network:
Building PPC & Paid Advertising Success without Cookies
Use similar audiences
Major PPC platforms like Google and Microsoft provide “similar audiences” segments, which is when the algorithm finds users with similar online behavior.
Yes, it’s a third-party audience feature, but it could stick around because it’s based on search history and account profile data.
Build affinity and in-market audiences
These are users that are searching for a specific product, which means they’re high-intent, short-term audiences.
The main upside of these audiences is that they don’t need to be built off your first-party audiences and they’re created by on-platform usage, making them “durable.”
Use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) predictive audiences
This segment blends your on-site audience data with predictive algorithms within GA4 to determine potential user actions.
For instance, GA4 may predict likely purchasers, 28-day top spenders, and more.
Play around with the Topics API
Google has proposed a few cookieless tracking solutions, but their Topics API in particular seems promising.
Here’s how it works: Chrome determines topics and interests based on a user’s 3-week search history. Brands can target those topics to deliver specific ads. After 3 weeks, the topics are deleted.
Since it’s privacy-friendly, it may just be a key tool for expanding your audiences in the future.
Final Word
Time to throw away the cookie jar…
We’re entering a new era. Start planning sooner than later!
