2023 Planning for Marketers

“We need to better utilise our data, how do we do this?”

“3rd party cookies are on the way out, what should we do?”

“How do we speak to consumers with more personalised messaging?”

It’s been on the hit list for marketers and agency partners for a while, but now more than ever meeting rooms and Zoom calls are hearing quotes like these, and it’s a good thing!

The trouble with this is, although clients are building on their first-party data capabilities, the industry is largely unprepared for the signal loss that is set to come in the near future, driven largely by the tightening of government privacy and technology regulations.

While technology and regulatory change is ultimately aimed at protecting consumers and improving the ecosystem for participants, it has the potential to vastly overhaul the advertising marketplace, as it starts to create uncertainty for marketers and remove confidence.

We’ve all been witness to the performance decline in platforms like Meta, as iOS and Apple continue to roll out more consumer first privacy updates, meanwhile the sky has been falling for more than a decade for the ol’ 3rd party cookie. What happens in the next 12-24 months internally for clients though, will be what defines their ability to succeed in the digital transformation era.

As consumption, content and interactions become increasingly digital, data becomes central as the currency for consumer experiences. Brands and companies that are building the infrastructure now to handle, process, govern and activate consumer data will have the ability to provide data transparency to consumers and a more personalised experience.

The good news is, the team at Rapid Media are already working with clients to help build this infrastructure, and we’ve laid out some key milestones below.

ICI: Effectiveness to be measured in minutes…

Rapid Media’s propriety measurement and attribution tool allows campaign effectiveness to be measured in minutes, not months. Our bank of APIs deliver both above and below the line data to be ingested and transformed, enriched by our marketing first data scientists, to help provide real time insight, cause and effect modelling and predictive analytics to drive more efficient media buying. Allowing marketers of tomorrow to know what happened today.

2. Google Analytics 4

Universal Analytics will be retired by June 2023. By that time, Universal Analytics will stop collecting new data and users will need to completely migrate to GA4. As most organisations need more than one year of data to run year-on-year analysis, we strongly recommend brands implement tracking in GA4 ASAP. This is crucial as Google is not planning on providing any data migrations from Universal Analytics to GA4. To learn more about Google Analytics 4, click here.

3. Conversion API

The conversions API creates a connection between an advertiser’s marketing data and the Meta systems that optimise ad targeting, decrease cost per action and measures results. Our partnership with Amazon Web Services allows us to implement conversion API for clients.

4. Data Activation

Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) is a new industry solution designed to address privacy first identifiers, developed by the Trade Desk. UID2 enables advertisers, agencies, ad technology companies, and ad publishers selling advertising to continue to provide relevant, personalised advertising without the use of third-party cookies. TTD and AWS recently signed a deal that will allow advertisers and publishers to anonymously match ad opportunities with their own first-party user data, thus helping protect consumer privacy and delivering relevant advertising to users. This is another solution we can help build out for clients as part of our partnership with Amazing Web Services and the Trade Desk.

5. (CDP) Customer Data Platform

Whether you’re new to first-party data collection or already have some marketing automation systems in place, using a CDP can make it easy to create and implement your customer data strategy. A comprehensive CDP solution collects, governs, synthesizes, and activates customer data.

These steps might sound daunting, but they are a crucial to-do list for your team. To discuss this more and prepare your business for the future, get in touch with Rapid Media.

Share to Social