The Media Buyer Newsletter #56 🌋   

Welcome to The Media Buyer Newsletter, where we deep dive into the latest ecomm data powered by Northbeam.

In our 56th installment, we apologize - we will not be sharing performance data for several weeks while our engineers overhaul our database. This does not affect Northbeam customers, but our little data pull has to pause for a while. My sincerest apologies, and I'll work hard to make sure you find value in this newsletter anyway. 

So this week, we lead some other problematic stats: 

More than 78% of ad buys still use third-party cookies. 

We spoke about this at eTail West last week and it bears repeating. 

Even though Google claims all third-party cookies will be deprecated by Q3, as of November last year, the majority of marketers still use these cookies. 

We foresee a catastrophic "iOS 14.5" level scenario approaching for marketers. The end of the COVID boom and Apple's crackdown in-app tracking disrupted strategies and ended careers. The same could happen again here. 

If Google exponentially speeds up cookie deprecation, many of our growth strategies will fail. We can't procrastinate any longer: it's time to start thinking about what's next for your business. 

So what are people doing to prepare? Epsilon ran a study to find out. 

In CPG, an overwhelming 88.9% are considering first-party data strategies. Why? The short answer is that the loss of third-party cookies hurts both tracking AND targeting. With first-party data, you can at least track performance properly, a must if you're running a creative-led experimentation strategy.

There are three huge issues which will plague marketers this year:

1. Cookie deprecation

2. Walled gardens

3. The loss of measurement

Let's explore how first-party data can help you solve this issues. And I promise this isn't just a huge advertisement for Northbeam. I mean, it is, but I'm hoping this is also helpful. 

Problem 1: Cookie Deprecation

Barring any major complaints from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, Google is turning off all cookies by Q3. 

This will rip the engines out of most performance marketing, especially on the retargeting front. You (or the various ad servers you use) won’t be able to access behavioral or browsing data.

In some cases, you won’t be able to do basic A/B testing, and frequency capping will be harder without cookies. 

Without a way to effectively communicate sales and conversion movement using third-party cookies, platforms may not even be able to properly calculate sales-oriented metrics like ROAS anymore. Not unless they own the ecommerce data. 

This is why every social media platform is pushing for their own hosted shopping solution - but more on that later. 

The solution: make your own data! If you are making your own first-party behavioral, personalization, or conversion data using a blended collection of data you’re gathering yourself, you can create a privacy-compliant dataset that’s completely unaffected by cookie deprecation. 

We’re already doing this for our users at Northbeam. You can use this data for any marketing analysis you want - if you’re building your analyses on first-party data, which is built on the fundamental, untouchable metadata passed around by basic internet browsing, you’re future-proof. 

Problem 2: Everybody is building "walled gardens."

A "walled garden" is a closed ecosystem in which a company has significant control over the hardware, apps, or content shared in the garden. 

Facebook is a walled garden. From content, to events, to shopping, Facebook controls a significant portion of it's users' online habits.

These walled gardens typically don't share data either. They want to "become the internet" for their users - by controlling the entire user experience within their "garden" these apps have complete understanding of a user's datapoints, choices, interests, etc. 

Google is deprecating cookies because they want to control more of the advertising and vendor spent used to advertise on their browsers and devices. Hence the “Privacy Sandbox.”

Apple has framed their iOS14.5 updates as a good move for privacy for consumers, but in reality, it was a play to open up space for them to launch their own demand-side ad platform. 

Meta and TikTok are explosively pushing their own shopping platforms. Having the entire path to conversion within one app is the only way they can accurately attribute revenue to ads, the lifeblood of performance marketing. 

These social media apps don’t just want to be popular, they each want to singlehandedly dominate the buying experience from awareness to last-mile delivery. 

They want to be a walled garden, where both their advertisers and users spend 100% of their online time in one single app.

Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk - these founders know that the real battle is for users’ time. This is why Amazon started a streaming service, and why Musk wants X to become another Paypal. 

The problem is that our marketing is omnichannel. You’re running CTV ads, radio ads, facebook ads, podcast, anything. Consumers are hearing about you from a dozen different platforms, all of which are incentivized to take credit for the conversion. It’s already virtually impossible to do omnichannel reporting with in-platform data and it’s only going to get worse. 

With first-party data, you can escape this trap. You can make ad conversion data that reaches across all your channels and tells you the truth about how your channels interact. Like how your TikTok ads are driving awareness, but Google is capturing all that conversion momentum.

With accurate paths to conversion, you know what channels deserve more marketing spend and where to cut back.

If you rely on in-app data alone, you're getting an incomplete view of your path to conversion. 

Problem 3: We're going to lose a lot of measurement. 

The third (and maybe biggest) problem nobody seems to be talking about is the loss of measurement granularity. 

With the loss of third-party cookies and increase in walled gardens, we’re going to be forced back into measurement schemes that are simpler than we prefer. 

Fewer than two-thirds of marketing professionals worldwide have high confidence in their ROI measurement across channels. 

That’s because if you’re relying on in-platform or other third party data, you simply won’t have the granularity you are used to. 

Metrics like ROAS will suffer because without granular understanding of the customer journey, your ROAS is a guess at best. It would implicitly bias towards users who spend all their time within one app, which we know isn't true.

Once again, first-party data is your solution. You can generate your own omni-channel ROAS or MER numbers, you won’t have to worry about the walled gardens slamming the doors on each other and not sharing data. As much as these platforms want to own the entire customer journey, our customers are still omnichannel. 

If all of this is hitting home, jump on a call with us. You won't regret it. 

Some helpful links and news we found: 

💁 Linkedin is increasing in popularity as the next hot app for influencers. We predicted in this newsletter that Linkedin would rise again, and here we are, inexplicably. 

👖 Levi's is remaking itself into an AI-driven DTC powerhouse. An example for legacy brands who want to become hot and sexy again. 

💀 Facebook News is dead. The biggest political influence tool in generations is taking a step back. This definitely will do... something. 

🚙 Olipop wants to hire two best friends to be soda influencers. $40k/year salaries to travel, shoot content, and drink soda. Anybody wanna be my best friend? 

💰 Here comes the Reddit IPO and they want $6.5 billion. We'll see. 

Job postings we like:

🎨 Marketing Director - Pace Gallery: a marketing leadership role at an NYC art gallery. 

🕶️ Head of Growth, Agency Services - Valtech: an agency-facing growth role? Haven't heard of this before. 

🌴 Director, Acquisition Marketing - The Shade Store: a well-paying gig near NYC. Move out while moving up. 

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