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Here we go again…
After months and months of promises, pinky promises, and stone-faced utterances of “No, we really really mean it this time!”, Google has officially announced what in recent weeks appeared increasingly inevitable: Third-party cookie deprecation in Chrome will be delayed. Again. This time, to an as-yet unannounced time beyond Q4 2024.
The deciding blow to this latest missed deadline came after a damning report by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) indicating that Google’s Privacy Sandbox would fall short of meeting the country’s regulatory standards.
Per Google’s announcement: “We recognize that there are ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators and developers, and will continue to engage closely with the entire ecosystem. It’s also critical that the CMA has sufficient time to review all evidence including results from industry tests, which the CMA has asked market participants to provide by the end of June. Given both of these significant considerations, we will not complete third-party cookie deprecation during the second half of Q4.”
The news was met with a mix of intrigue, side eye, and shrugs from an industry that has grown increasingly frustrated with Google’s approach to the issue and largely unsatisfied with the Privacy Sandbox’s inconsistent rollout.
“The entire ad industry can’t be ready for change if Google isn’t ready for it,” said Noor Naseer, VP of Media Innovations & Technology at Basis Technologies. “As things stand today, there’s a lot of ambiguity around the application of Privacy Sandbox tools—almost everything the average advertising professional knows about Privacy Sandbox is hearsay. Few have tested it, and they’re all waiting for more reviews on who else has done it, how they’ve done it, and to what degree of success. So this update is not a surprise, but a welcome sigh of relief, even if it’s just a temporary one.”
For now, it appears that Google is eyeing 2025 as its latest target for deprecating cookies from Chrome. But the delay is expected to be temporary, with the goal of giving the company, industry partners, and regulators enough time to work through their laundry list of concerns with the Privacy Sandbox APIs.
“While the industry is getting a bit more time—which certainly provides some relief—the way I see it, this isn’t a reason to take the foot off the accelerator,” said Ian Trider, VP of Product – DSP at Basis. “No matter what, the status quo will not persist forever, and there's basically zero chance that third-party cookie deprecation doesn’t happen at all. At this stage, it’s a matter of making sure that there are sensible technical solutions, and that Google is addressing any risk of anti-competitive behavior to the satisfaction of regulators.”
At Basis, the news of Google pushing back the third-party cookie phase-out to early 2025 is being seen as an opportunity for further refinement. “The delay isn't ideal, but it's an opportunity,” said Robert Kurtz, Group VP, Search Media Solutions at Basis. “We were prepared for the initial 2024 deadline, but with this extended runway, we can double-down on our cookieless targeting strategy, with more in-depth testing and optimization of privacy-focused solutions, first-party data initiatives, and additional partnerships to ensure a smooth transition.”
“By utilizing this delay strategically," said Kurtz, "the industry can emerge stronger in the cookieless future.”
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While third-party cookie deprecation in Chrome may be delayed, the advertising industry is already working to embrace a more privacy-friendly future. Learn more about how marketers are confronting signal loss in our report, Identity vs. Privacy: Digital Advertising in a Cookieless World.
Amidst all the networking, socializing, and poolside festivities at this year's Possible in Miami Beach, there was one topic that dominated all the rest: AI.
Throughout the event, artificial intelligence was on the top of attendees' minds and the tips of the speakers' tongues. How are you using it? Where can it provide the most (and least) benefits? What are the keys to harnessing AI’s power successfully? And how can business leaders fully exploit the potential of AI at their organizations while mitigating its safety risks?
The clearest takeaway from the industry's thought leaders? Marketing's AI revolution has officially commenced.
Here are some of the top insights to come out of the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach at this year's event.
Early usage indicates that AI could lead to a productivity boom, allowing marketers to get more done in less time. A Microsoft study found that users of its Copilot AI tool spend less time writing emails, summarizing long documents, and completing first drafts of documents. AI can “attend” meetings for us and summarize the key findings and takeaways. It can also provide new context around how those meetings are conducted, combing through transcripts to identify blind spots in the conversation and capture the tone and sentiment to help people improve the way they show up to work. When used all together, AI can help make us not just more productive, but better marketers and professionals.
In just the last few years, AI-powered capabilities grown at an extraordinary rate, and the idea of AI disrupting every aspect of our lives appears to be on the horizon—including marketing.
Rex Briggs, Chief AI Officer at Claritas and author of the forthcoming book “The AI Conundrum,” noted that marketing is, in many ways, an “ideal use case” for AI.
With AI, marketers can now optimize campaigns in real time and with greater precision, leveraging AI’s proficiency at recognizing patterns and creating hyper-nuanced segments dynamically and on-the-fly to drive desired outcomes. The individual results of these optimizations can be small, but when added up, they can result in huge gains over baseline performance. What’s still to come (but appears to be just on the horizon) is enhancing the technology so that it can get better at explaining precisely what—and why—the AI is optimizing ads based on various criteria for more real-time transparency and clarity.
However, despite all the hubbub around technological innovation, we mere mortals still have a very valuable and unique role to play. Human marketers will be essential in making the final decisions around what to use—and what to change—throughout the campaign process. To skilled marketers, AI represents a powerful new tool to help them move faster, be more productive, and grow more effective.
Google re-iterated its commitment to both the Privacy Sandbox and to deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome by the end of 2024. But Amit Varia, Director of Google’s Privacy Sandbox, emphasized that Privacy Sandbox APIs are not intended to be a 1:1 “replacement” for third-party cookies, and that marketers are best suited to leveraging a range of identity solutions in unison as part of a larger privacy-friendly toolkit. And while initial users of these Privacy Sandbox APIs are seeing effective results, we are still effectively operating in a test environment, where just 1% of Chrome users are playing in the Privacy Sandbox sans third-party cookies, and even Privacy Sandbox evangelists noted there are still ample questions about how these solutions will perform at scale.
So, what value can AI provide marketers in a cookieless environment? MMA data showed that AI-powered personalization drove a 35-65% increase in ad performance within contextual environments. And AI can optimize first-party data to better target existing audience and to create new lookalike audiences.
Audio and display ads both play to generative AI’s current strengths, making them ideal channels for marketers looking to experiment with AI-generated assets and campaigns.
Progressive, for instance, has begun using AI to create more personalized audio ads. The insurance giant incorporated AI across every step of the campaign process, allowing them to go from brief to approval in just 6 weeks (vs. the 22 weeks it previously took them without AI). Leveraging AI-generated scripts and voice talent—after training the AI on Progressive’s brand and an extensive content archive—Progressive’s team was able to create 96 ads in a single week, then run and test them using dynamic creative optimization (DCO) to progressively adapt the ads as market conditions changed. In doing so, they were able to assess different ad parts and predict the right combination for the right audience.
“You can train AI on your own content, hit a button, and end up with different scripts, and then when you are happy with the scripts, you can hit another button to develop the audio, and then when you are happy with those, you can move on to approvals,” said Remi Kent, CMO at Progressive.
Though AI generated the scripts, the personas, and the background music ads, humans were involved and instrumental in every step of the process, in what Kent described as a “collaboration” between humans and generative AI. The result was a process that allowed Progressive to move faster and create more ads with more personalization—all at scale. By using AI-generated ads and leveraging AI-powered optimizations, Progressive was able to drive a 197% lift in quotes over baseline.
Effective utilization of AI for targeting, attribution, and optimization relies on high-quality (and high quantities) of data. The problem? Silos. So very many silos. Disconnected channels, siloed platforms, walled gardens, and a general lack of transparency and data centralization is all too often resulting in organizations having an incomplete picture of their data.
In a session on how marketers can “hack their adtech,” Richard Brandolino, Global Media Channels & Adtech Leader at IBM, recommended that agencies and brands keen on exploring (and exploiting) AI’s benefits should look to facilitate cohesion and interconnectivity across their tech stacks. Streamlining and unifying data flows can yield significant improvements in profitability, cost efficiency, and strategic agility.
Beyond even efficiency and improved campaign results, Possible speakers addressed one other aspect of AI in marketing: the balance between AI’s promise of innovation vs. its inherent risks.
Jaime Teevan, Chief Scientist at Microsoft, noted that the decisions we make with AI today will influence the future of jobs, our industry, and our world. Since introducing its AI-powered Copilot last year, Microsoft has strong feedback that the technology is making people more efficient and saving them time. What’s left to determine is what will people do with that time.
At its best, AI has the potential to create a generational opportunity for innovation, but marketers’ experimentation should always be accompanied by careful consideration about not just the immediate impact of those decisions, but the third- (and fourth- and fifth-) degree effects of those decisions.
Teevan noted that, when first beginning to explore how Microsoft could incorporate OpenAI’s GPT 4 into its products, she began from a place of “How do we bring this technology to people, and do so in a responsible way?” Perhaps tellingly, Teevan’s implication throughout a session on AI seemed to be that the “responsible way” Microsoft has landed upon is to outsource much of this responsibility to its users, imploring them to do their own research, experimentation, and exploration with the technology and hoping they do so responsibly.
Curious about how leading marketers are using generative AI? Basis surveyed over 200 marketing and advertising professionals from top agencies and brands, brands, and publishers to see how marketers are feeling about AI today and gauge how they think it will shape the industry going forward.
In recent years, the digital advertising industry has come face to face with a barrage of new policies and regulations. With concerns mounting over data privacy, consumer protection, and AI, new laws have sprung up at a variety of levels—from state, to federal, to global. This regulatory frenzy underscores a complex balancing act between commercial interests and consumers’ needs.
Consumers accept ads’ presence in our digital ecosystem, with 95% saying they would prefer ads to paying higher costs for an ad-free online experience. A further 88% say they want ads that are personalized to their interests and needs—personalization that is largely dependent on the personal information that consumers do (or do not) share.
However, that being said, there is still a strong desire among consumers and regulators alike for increased transparency and consent around data collection and usage that’s built upon deep distrust of companies’ data practices, with 81% of Americans saying they are concerned about how companies use the data they collect about them and 67% admitting they have little to no understanding of what those companies are doing with that data once they collect it.
Advertisers, then, are faced with a daunting task: Prioritize consumer privacy and adapt to new and ever-evolving regulation, while simultaneously delivering personalized digital advertising experiences that resonate with audiences.
This challenge was at the forefront of conversations at the IAB’s recent Public Policy & Legal Summit, where industry leaders explored this juxtaposition and shared critical considerations for advertising teams. Whether in discussions around bias in AI, presentations on state-specific privacy legislation, or conversations on how to address kids’ safety online, navigating this complex landscape demands not only attention, but conscious action.
While federal regulation has remained largely in limbo, there’s been a flurry of enacted legislation at the state level. In 2023, new consumer data privacy acts took effect in California, Connecticut, Colorado, Utah and Virginia. By early 2026, the number of state-level laws will grow to 14 states.
In the absence of a federal framework, advertising teams are left with a patchwork of regulation—and one that varies significantly from state to state. These laws range from relatively baseline (for instance, VCPDA), to enhanced (like the Colorado Privacy Act), all the way to business-friendly (such as the Utah Consumer Privacy Act).
With such significant variation, a one-size-fits-all approach will not suffice. Many advertisers have attempted to find the strictest regulation—namely, California’s regulation, the CCPA and CPRA—and simply adhere to that in the hopes it will cover all their bases. However, regulation is evolving so rapidly—and there are many different types of consumer data—that trying to find and adopt the “strictest” laws will likely hinder teams and create self-imposed limits where they are not necessary. Instead, those organizations that prioritize flexibility, bolster their legal and technical teams, and take the time to truly understand these different policies and regulations will be most well-positioned for success.
Generative AI was, unsurprisingly, another major topic of conversation. The technology has garnered significant attention since its public debut in late 2022, generating considerable buzz within the digital advertising ecosystem. However, its oversight and regulation pose challenges, given the rapid pace at which this technology is evolving and becoming accessible.
Though the US has yet to enact widespread laws governing its use, President Biden signed an executive order in late 2023 aimed at addressing the “safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of Artificial Intelligence.” Additionally, the House introduced a bill that would create a commission to spearhead AI regulation.
Despite a lack of codified regulations, FTC leaders shared a few primary focus areas that should be top of mind for advertising leaders as they navigate AI. First, they encouraged teams to conduct AI-focused risk assessments and to ask their vendors to do the same, so that they can evaluate and mitigate any potential risks, such as privacy, security, or bias. They also flagged that advertisers need to be particularly attuned to the risk of bias in AI, since the data and content these models are trained by is generated by humans—and humans, inherently, have biases. Though these tools can prove useful across many aspects of digital advertising, it’s crucial that they be consistently and critically evaluated.
As the technology continues to develop, regulators are certain to prioritize its oversight to ensure that AI is employed in ways that safeguard human safety and prioritizes trust.
Regulation of the advertising industry appears to be focused on simultaneously protecting consumer privacy and ensuring their safety and security online. But regulators are also using these laws to address larger societal risks and issues that inevitably arise in an increasingly digital world. This convergence of privacy, trust, and safety was a major theme throughout the summit, and advertisers must recognize the significance of this overlap as they navigate today’s complex regulatory landscape.
The balance of power around user data in marketing appears to be swinging away from corporations and toward consumers, and companies will be well-served to take notice and act accordingly. Take, for example, the FTC’s recent action against Amazon: The agency’s complaint relates specifically to consumer data, but it goes beyond standard privacy protections and accuses the company of using data to manipulate people into unwittingly spending more than they intend, alleging that Amazon’s “manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs known as "dark patterns” essentially “trick” customers into auto-renewing their Prime subscriptions.” The move indicates a new regulatory outlook where protecting consumers’ data isn’t enough, and companies must also ensure that data isn’t being used in a way that harms consumers or goes against their best interests.
This shift in power between consumers and corporations is also evident in regulators’ approach to children’s data—a particularly pressing issue, given that one in three internet users globally is a child under 18 years old. Marketing leaders must remember that kids’ data is, inherently, sensitive data, and that there are strict regulations aimed at safeguarding both this data and the kids themselves. This has been especially evident in social media, where regulators are concerned not only with the collection of children’s user data, but also the digital environment that data is subsequently used to create. Social media algorithms, in particular, have come under fire for their role in increasing mental health concerns, with some states passing legislation aimed specifically at restricting algorithms that target young users.
The FTC has also proposed changes to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) that would shift the onus from parents to providers for ensuring that all digital spaces are safe and secure for children. Though only recommended changes at present, the rules can serve as useful guidelines as advertising teams consider how they’re collecting, storing, and using kids’ data to create experiences for these users online.
Navigating ever-evolving regulation can be challenging, though there are certain strategies that can help.
First, advertising teams should constantly assess their relationships with vendors and third-party partners and review the processes they have in place to ensure they’re meeting all necessary laws and regulations. The IAB recently launched a new tool called the IAB Diligence Platform, which aims to guide these assessments by sharing a set of standardized privacy diligence questions for professionals across the digital advertising industry.
It also helps to have a strong legal team that can stay abreast of new regulatory developments and craft internal guidance and best practices. When regulations inevitably change, these legal teams can assess the implications for your organization, compare them with existing protocols to develop updated guidance, and share these changes in a way that is clear, consistent, and accessible.
Additionally, marketing and agency leaders should invest in internal training and education to ensure teams' compliance with any new rules or regulations. Leaders should ensure they establish clear communication channels to relay regulatory changes affecting their teams, conduct thorough briefings on updated legal guidance and clearly outline the implications of these changes for day-to-day operations.
Advertisers should also be deliberate when selecting vendors and partners to ensure they share similar values and priorities around data privacy and regulatory adherence, but organizations cannot simply rely on their vendors and assume that they’re checking all the boxes when it comes to adhering to regulations—all of this is a shared responsibility, and teams that acknowledge and embrace that can meet today’s regulatory demands proactively and effectively.
In today’s complex digital ecosystem, prioritizing consumer privacy and safety isn’t simply a best practice—it’s a necessity. Balancing consumer data privacy and online safety with the delivery of personalized advertising experiences poses a unique challenge. However, by staying informed on the latest regulation and legislation, maintaining flexibility, and committing to making decisions centered around consumer needs, advertising teams can cultivate trust while still delivering tailored messaging that resonates with their target audiences.
When it comes to US voter sentiment, there is a clear generational divide that extends across feelings on hot-button political issues, local vs. national political involvement, optimism about the upcoming election season, and the overall state of the country.
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In 2020, many leaders committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at their organizations in response to the movement for racial justice set in motion by the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Four years later, some those commitments appear to be wavering, with forecasts estimating that organizational DEI investments will fall by 13% in 2024 compared to 2022. In the advertising sector specifically, recent layoffs at Google and Meta resulted in downsized DEI programs, and investment in diverse-owned media companies has slowed.
It seems that for many companies, amidst continuing economic uncertainty and in the lack of acute public pressure such as that felt in the wake of Floyd’s murder, DEI has been relegated to a “non-mission critical” investment.
Despite these trends, much of the advertising industry remains committed to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, and there is ample opportunity for continued prioritization and growth of DEI efforts.
To further explore how leaders can make meaningful strides toward DEI at their organizations, we sat down with Lois Castillo, Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Basis Technologies. Lois, a veteran of both DEI and advertising work, recently wrapped up Basis Technologies’ first virtual IDEA (inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility) summit, an event aimed at integrating IDEA principles more deeply into Basis’ organizational culture. Below, she shares what companies can be doing better in their DEI work, how DEI leaders can anchor themselves amidst the complexity of that work, and how the IDEA summit served to advance Basis’ DEI-focused goals.
Lois Castillo: First, the obvious answer: Not doing it.
By this point, leaders should understand that DEI is not just an ethical imperative, or good for business, but something organizations can’t survive without. The world is a diverse place that’s only getting more diverse, and if companies don’t reflect that increased diversity, they’re just not going to make it. When businesses don’t change with the times, they perish—for example, look at what happened to Blockbuster’s once streaming TV became the norm. The same thing goes for leaders: If you’re not doing your own work and development around DEI and bringing that into your organization, you’re not going to be leading for much longer.
When it comes to companies taking action, a common mistake I notice is treating DEI as solely the responsibility of HR. While fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion among employees is crucial, that’s just one aspect of the work. Companies that fail to make a real impact are likely fixating solely on this aspect instead of adopting a holistic approach that extends beyond their own workforce.
My team takes a three-pronged approach, addressing DEI in the following areas:
Additionally, I think it’s worth noting that companies that don’t include accessibility in their DEI work are missing the mark. To be truly inclusive of diverse team members, we need to work towards an accessible workplace—one that considers the spectrum of ability and neurodiversity and works to ensure that everyone on those spectrums can succeed.
LC: Well, I start with transparency and honesty—I don’t pretend I know everything. But I love people, and I’m curious about people, and I’m committed to constantly learning about the issues that people experience so that I can better address them in my work.
It’s true that all the axes of diversity among us can get overwhelming if you start to think about it, and that there’s a lot of work that must be done to address those axes individually. At the same time, there are ways we can address all of them at once, like creating shared language and behaviors for interacting with each other in the workplace that are rooted in respect and accountability—for example, calling someone in instead of calling them out when they make a mistake.
This isn’t easy work, that’s for sure. It’s not for the faint of heart. But that doesn’t mean you give up!
LC: First, let me break down what the summit looked like. We organized a variety of sessions, each with an expert speaker who shared stories and insights based on a specific aspect of inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA). We had sessions on topics including how ageism shows up the workplace, how to foster inclusive environments for neurodivergent folks, and what great allyship looks like in practice. In addition to presentations from our experts, the sessions provided space for dialogue, where our employees could share personal experiences, ask questions, and engage with each other.
One of my main goals behind the event was to help move our culture forward by grounding everyone in the same language and knowledge. There are so many people with so many different life experiences at our company, and I wanted us to get grounded around the complexity and the multifaceted nature of diversity, equity, and inclusion. I think when people hear the word “diversity,” they’re often thinking of gender and race. But we’re diverse in so many ways, and they all intersect. So, advancing our people’s knowledge and vocabulary of those differences was a big part of the event.
LC: I hope people walked away with curiosity about all the different ways people exist in the world, and with actionable tools that can help them in their own learning journeys around inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility. Many of the topics at this specific event were geared around self, encouraging people to investigate their own experiences. I hope the sessions inspired people to get curious about their own experiences of difference in the world, as well as their triggers, blind spots, and biases. It’s important to get curious about yourself, because that will more than likely translate into curiosity about others’ experiences.
I think my favorite part of the summit was just watching the chats in these sessions and seeing all the engagement and the different questions and contributions people had. I loved seeing how participants felt free and safe enough to share their vulnerability. It’s really meaningful to see presentations and conversations resonating with people, and to see them feel secure enough to bring their personal lives and experiences into conversations with their colleagues.
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Learn more about Basis Technologies’ commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility here.
Artificial intelligence is transforming the world of social media advertising—and fast. But when it comes to a channel where backlash can be particularly swift and unforgiving, just how fast should brands adopt these new technologies?
Social advertisers are seeing a boom in AI-powered advertising tools, and teams are facing increased pressure to embrace them to harness the speed and efficiency they promise. At the same time, some of these tools—particularly those powered by generative AI—have come accompanied by new concerns around both quality and brand safety, as the race to bring new AI solutions to market has resulted in many of them feeling like they’re still works in progress.
Advertisers worry about the quality of AI-generated ads, given events like Google’s recent suspension of its Gemini AI chatbot’s ability to create images of people after it generated historically inaccurate images. And a recent study found that only 38% of consumers have a positive view of AI, calling into question how AI-generated ads will be received.
A healthy dose of skepticism is, well, healthy. But these concerns, while well-founded, don’t mean advertisers should avoid testing and learning with AI-powered tools that fit their goals. There are a variety of ways advertisers can begin adopting these technologies to tap into their benefits while maintaining caution around things like brand safety. As automation- and AI-led solutions become the new normal in digital advertising, it’s critical that teams start developing their skill sets and increasing their familiarity with these tools to ensure they can use them with confidence and enjoy the increased efficiencies they provide.
AI has already started to change how advertisers target audiences on social media. Many platforms—including Meta, TikTok, and LinkedIn—are beginning to pull back on the number of manual controls they’re giving advertisers to connect with target audiences. Instead, they’re moving advertisers towards AI-powered tools that identify the most appropriate target audiences for their campaigns. For instance, Meta’s Advantage+ Targeting feature automatically identifies targetable audiences based on factors like performance data, consumers’ interactions with other ads in the same vertical, and the content consumers are looking at across Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook.
In some ways, this is a very exciting development. We’re seeing solid results from our own use of these tools, so the numbers are speaking for themselves. On the other hand, it’s a bit nerve-wracking: Advertisers aren’t used to letting platforms take the wheel like this, and if you have a very specific target audience in mind—and you're spending an enormous amount of money trying to reach them—you want to know that you're serving ads to the right people. The shift toward AI-powered audience targeting may end up creating yet another black box to baffle and frustrate advertisers desperate for transparency.
However, this is the direction these platforms are going in, which means we’ll eventually reach a point where advertisers won’t be able to revert to those very specific, manual settings they’d grown accustomed to. Because of this, it’s critical for advertisers to at least begin testing and learning with these tools to grow more comfortable with this shift.
Of course, having AI handle the targeting doesn’t mean advertisers should just set and forget these campaigns. It’s critical to review performance data and assess whether the AI-powered tools are actually accomplishing their goals. For example, if an advertiser is running a lead gen ad, and Facebook is recommending some fairly broad targeting settings, is that actually driving quality leads? Maybe… or maybe not. In this new, AI-driven social world, advertisers will need to carefully assess and adjust their strategies accordingly.
Social platforms are also empowering advertisers to create assets like copy, images, and entire ads via AI. There are a number of significant benefits to these tools, the biggest being simplicity, speed, and ease of launch. This type of built-in efficiency could radically transform how advertisers develop and scale their social campaigns. Advertisers can generate and test new creative variants across different audience segments for more fine-tuned campaigns, or even experiment with entirely different creative approaches to see which resonates more strongly with consumers.
However, efficiency without effectiveness is ultimately inadequate, and many advertisers have real concerns around this shift towards AI-generated content. Without sufficient quality control and campaign monitoring, advertisers using AI-generated ads run the risk of wasting money on ineffective creative—or, worse yet, garnering some serious backlash from consumers.
There’s also some concern that we’re going to get to the point where most (if not all) of the ads on social are generated by AI, and we may well hit a point where consumers don't want to see AI-generated assets, but will instead desire something that feels a little more authentic. Considering this, advertisers should start to think about how they can strike a balance and find the right opportunities to use these tools, but not necessarily allow them to dictate all their social media advertising and messaging efforts.
Social listening is an increasingly key advertising tool, providing insights that can significantly impact a brand’s strategic approach. Manual social listening can be time-consuming and tiresome, but new AI-powered social listening tools can review and process huge amounts of data and sentiment and automatically pull out the top takeaways for advertisers’ immediate use. For instance: What are the top concerns of consumers in a certain category? What does overall sentiment look like? And why is it negative or positive?
Comparatively speaking, these AI-powered social listening tools are also a safe and impactful way for social teams to leverage AI, as they aren’t generating anything that is subsequently going out to consumers. As a result, this is a solution that’s seeing a high rate of adoption: In Q4 2023, social listening was the third-most popular use of AI (after chatbots and copy generation) among brands and retailers, with 40% saying they use AI-powered social listening tools.
All in all, social listening offers even the most AI-averse advertisers a low-risk, high-reward avenue for harnessing the power of AI.
The best ways to leverage artificial intelligence-powered tools for social media advertising will differ from agency to agency and brand to brand: Some are ready and willing to go all-in on generative AI, for instance, while others may approach adoption at a slower pace. Whatever pace you choose, the important thing is to test and learn in some way on tools that fall into each of these three categories. The future of social advertising is AI-driven, and advertisers who don’t start getting comfortable with these technologies will lack a competitive edge as these solutions grow more commonplace and become more advanced in the coming years.
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Want to learn more about how advertisers are approaching AI? We surveyed marketing and advertising professionals from top agencies, brands, non-profits, and publishers to better understand advertiser sentiments around the technology, as well as how they’re leveraging AI-driven tools in their work. Check out the top takeaways in our report, AI and the Future of Marketing.
It was early 2020 when Google first announced plans to deprecate third-party cookies in its Chrome browser. Now, several years and numerous delays later, those once-distant plans are coming to fruition: Cookies were turned off for 1% of users as of early 2024, and they appear set to be deprecated for all users by the end of the year.
Google is by no means early to the party when it comes to taking a stance against the legacy identifier, considering that Mozilla’s Firefox started limiting cookies back in 2013 and Apple’s Safari followed suit in 2017. But given that Chrome currently accounts for more than 66% of the global browser share, Google’s move will have the biggest impact on advertisers.
In the years since Google’s initial announcement, the digital advertising industry has been aflutter with conversations around alternative targeting solutions for a cookieless world—from contextual targeting, to geotargeting and location-based targeting, to collecting and maximizing first-party data, to tools like Google’s Privacy Sandbox.
But targeting isn’t the only thing that will be transformed by cookie deprecation. A recent survey found there are two key challenges that are top-of-mind for advertising professionals as we head into a cookieless world: Targeting and measurement/attribution. As the digital advertising industry stands on the precipice of cookie loss, the conversation is expanding to include more comprehensive solutions around not only targeting, but measurement as well.
Since the advent of the third-party ad server, marketers have grown used to empirical metrics housed within reporting modules: They knew exactly how many view-through conversions they were getting and the (relatively) precise path to conversion, and they could easily measure ad frequency. This was all enabled by third-party cookies, which tracked a user’s experience as they navigated the digital space.
As Google turns off third-party cookies for its users, advertisers are losing the cookie-fueled reports that they’ve relied on for years. Without them, advertising teams must reconsider how they both assess campaign performance and tell those performance stories to either clients or teams. And given that 30 million Chrome users have already had cookies turned off, the time to make that shift is now.
Among the industry leaders we work with, the ones who are adapting more quickly than their peers are those who understand how their buying decisions, audience strategies, and performance expectations need to shift, and are actively working to change how they communicate performance stories to their clients and teams.
For instance, cookie-based reports used to allow advertising teams to say, “This person saw my ad on this channel, they saw a retargeted ad X days later on this other channel, and then they purchased this product after X amount of time.” Now, without cookie-based data, teams will need to get comfortable telling stories that sound more like, “We invested X amount on this channel, X amount on this channel, and X amount on this channel. Though we can’t track conversions on the individual user level like we used to, we see that sales went up by X amount based on business data, that search terms peaked on this day, and that social engagement grew as well. Using various data sets, we can infer that those ads played a part in driving awareness, consideration, and, eventually, conversion.” Teams can also leverage data they gain from modelling to make projections about performance based on media spend, as well as cookieless conversion attribution to measure post-click conversions in a privacy-friendly way.
Just like with cookieless targeting, there isn’t a silver bullet solution out there that’s going to make measurement as precise as it was with third-party cookies—and advertisers should approach any claims that a certain solution can do so with a healthy amount of skepticism.
Instead of hoping for a fix-all solution, teams across the industry will need to experiment and try out different measurement tools to determine what works best for them in a cookieless world. It’s OK to not have a single path forward, and it’s OK to try different approaches—but it’s not OK to just keep waiting. In this new landscape, it’s about being comfortable with experimentation and adaptable to performance.
Tools like cookieless conversion attribution that rely on click strings or Google’s Privacy Sandbox reporting can give advertising teams some insights on conversions for anonymized groups of users in a privacy-friendly way. Strategies like media mix modeling—which rely on statistical analyses of media spending rather than individual user information—are another solution digital advertising teams might consider as they rethink measurement. Teams that get comfortable with modeling out what to expect from performance vs. having hard figures to rely upon will have an edge once third-party cookies are completely gone. Other tools like brand perception studies and audience panels can also prove useful when it comes to post-cookie storytelling. And if teams haven’t started optimizing their first-party data processes? Considering that first-party data is useful for both targeting and attribution, it’s a strategy that’s critical to invest in.
Leaders should also recognize that this new way of measuring is far more resource intensive, and that they won’t be able to have a digital media associate pull a comprehensive report to send to clients or stakeholders like they could when third-party cookies were around. In a cookieless world, there will be far more people—and a far greater level of skill—involved. Leaders who start to plan for this now will be well-positioned once cookies have been fully deprecated.
Whether industry professionals choose to grapple with it now or later, Google’s third-party cookie deprecation will change measurement across the digital advertising ecosystem. Leaders who work with their teams to reapproach how they communicate campaign performance, and to experiment with alternative measurement solutions, will set themselves up for success as the cookieless future becomes the cookieless present.
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Interested in how your peers are adapting to signal loss and preparing for the cookieless future? Basis Technologies surveyed over 200 marketing and advertising professionals across agencies, brands, non-profits, and publishers to find out how ready they feel for a world without cookies, what cookieless solutions they’re implementing, and more. Dig into the findings in our report, Identity vs. Privacy: Digital Advertising in a Cookieless World.
Earlier this month, droves of marketers and advertisers descended on Austin, Texas to soak in the sights and insights of SXSW 2024. Here are three insights from the notebooks of Basis’ Media Innovations & Technology team to help marketers keep 2024 moving in the right direction.
Podcasting increasingly stands as a contender in advertisers’ paid media strategies. That’s thanks to its unique ability to meet consumers where they are and building trust and affinity not just for podcasters, but for the brands that support them.
Despite the proven performance benefits, podcasting remains an under-invested channel for most brands. For marketers that are evaluating how to add podcast placements into media buys, start by forming a crawl, walk, run strategy approach. Messaging style is critical—after all, podcasting is, at its core, storytelling. Ad content should take on this same style to meet consumers in a mindset they’re already in. Brands should also cross-pollinate paid messaging into complementary channels like Instagram and TikTok to extend their presence, discover new audiences, and maximize their investment.
AI and machine learning will continue to improve podcasting’s capabilities—from content analysis, to niche audience segments, to creating content for advertisers and podcast producers.
Finally, advertisers should keep an eye on AI to potentially be applied as a measurement solution.
Data is the ultimate commodity in a cookieless world—particularly when it comes to effectively understanding and reaching audiences. One form of data that doesn’t get enough recognition in its ability to transform advertisers’ paid media strategies is causal data. At its heart, causal data is focused on measuring a brand’s ability to shift audience perceptions and beliefs about that brand.
Advertisers who want to leverage the power of causal data will need to get up close and personal with their audiences. This requires dedicated, qualitative audience research to understand who your audience is and what they care about—not just the tropes that have been created about them. Understanding the emotional drivers behind consumers’ decisions and perceptions of a brand can bridge data and art, transforming insight into creative messaging that resonates on a deeper level.
When it comes to measuring causal data outcomes, advertisers need to get curious and ask their audiences questions that dig into cause and effect. For example: “How did you feel about a brand before?” and “What touchpoints or communications led you to change your mind?”
Accessing the power of causal data involves a hands-on effort from advertisers, but the outcomes are invaluable, especially as consumers are increasingly loyal to the brands who can prove they truly understand who consumers are and what they need or care about.
The past few years have seen a continual churn of emerging technologies, hitting the scene with a healthy dose of hype. Marketers have been enchanted by the newness and novelty of these technologies (partially thanks to the brain’s novelty center), causing them to put discernment on the back burner.
However, hype and innovation often diverge, meaning marketers will need to override that novelty center to effectively evaluate new technologies based on the intrinsic value they present to a brand on an individual basis.
Marketers who ask questions of hyped-up solutions will be poised for successful deciphering of hype from reality. Consider questions like, “What value does this present to my organization?” “Is there an actual product available to us for use?” “What resources (personnel, investment, time) will be required?” And “What are the outcomes we can expect from using this solution?”
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Not able to make it to this year’s SXSW? Watch Noor Naseer’s session on navigating hype in advertising on demand and download the slides today.
Advertisers have had a lot on their plates in recent years, as they’ve navigated the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic uncertainty, ever-increasing media complexity, the emergence of AI and, of course, third-party cookie deprecation.
Amidst these dynamics, the allure of hype can be irresistible—particularly when a new technology, product, or solution promises a shortcut to making life better for marketers. But not all “trends” are alike, and while some of these technologies and solutions are real game changers, going all-in on the current hype won’t necessarily make a lasting impact on advertisers’ core challenges.
So, how can advertising leaders distinguish between solutions that are over-hyped from those that are hyped, well, appropriately?
Noor Naseer, Basis Technologies’ VP of Media Innovations + Technology, dug into this issue in detail in her presentation at SXSW 2024 in Austin. Check out the recording below to see all her insights and recommendations around navigating hype cycles on-demand:
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Want to dive further into Noor’s presentation? Click here to download the slides from her talk.