Since industry inception, digital advertising has relied on third-party cookies and mobile IDs to fuel targeting and optimization. Recent trends show us that this reliance cannot be counted on in the future. As a result, marketers have to recalibrate how they approach advertising and the relationship with their customers in order to remain effective.

As a result, we need to start laying the groundwork today in order to futureproof our marketing efforts as the effectiveness of digital technologies changes. Some potential steps that marketers need to take in order to mitigate the loss of third-party cookies include:

1. Invest in First-Party Data Collection

First party data is information you have collected directly from your audience. This investment could include creating innovative experiences that allow us to easily capture first party data in exchange for customer value and the tools, technology and platforms to capture and manage that first party data.

In the agriculture industry, we have been slow in the adoption of lead gen or ecommerce campaigns, which has significantly interfered with the capture of opted in user data.

2. Own the Customer Relationship

Having first-party data allows you to own the bulk of the customer relationship, rather than relying on digital advertising and social media platforms to mediate your customer relationship. The change in approach and priority then shifts from paid media to owned media. This means investing in high quality, valuable content and owned distribution channels such as email, marketing automation, digital experiences and organic social media.

3. Reduce Reliance on Paid Advertising

Paid media will become increasingly less effective, so we need to shift to owned and earned media to drive customer acquisition. There will still be a place for paid advertising, but our ability to narrowly target discrete audiences will be reduced. Instead we will need to shift to other non-paid activities. This would likely include search engine optimization, referral, affiliate, influencer, and public relations activities.

4. Rely on Algorithmic Targeting

Algorithmic targeting includes lookalike or similar audiences. With these types of tactics, we remove our manual control of audiences and placements, and replace them with AI-driven placements. This can be a difficult switch for many agri-marketers, as there is a hesitancy to trust the ad platforms and we want to reduce exposure to non farming audiences as much as possible. The advantage is that with the right conversion tracking, algorithmic-based targeting and tactics can do a better job of finding the right audience and delivering our desired responses. 

5. Focus on Remarkable Creative

As targeting options become more limited and we cannot narrowly define an audience like we have in the past, we will need to ensure our creative resonates with the right audience. We need to work hard to ensure our creative is remarkable and demands significant attention when it is seen by our target audience.

We have already experienced impacts to our ability to target and track users, and the need to adapt our approach is ever-increasing. Marketer