As privacy issues become a bigger concern each year that passes, advertising for companies is being unintentionally affected in negative ways.
When devices cannot be identified using cookies and other tracking mechanisms, business advertising methods that depend on those identifiers can no longer identify target audiences as easily.
This suggests that successful advertising for businesses must become more creative in the future, as new ways to find target audiences must be developed.
- Contextual Targeting - Business advertising based on contextual targeting as opposed to targeting using search history and device identification is coming back. Before these days of complex targeting practices using cookies to track user behaviors, all advertising was done on a contextual basis by putting ads within content where users are likely to be more interested in those ads rather than letting the algorithm do it.
- User Experience Is Critical - In all aspects of successful advertising for companies, providing a good user experience is still one factor that can either attract users to a website or send them away.
- Opt-In Ads - With cookies and other third-party data being phased out, advertising for companies must instead focus on opt-in advertising like mailing lists, sign-ups, quality content, and more, then find convincing ways to get users to provide first-party information.
- Video Advertising for Certain Audiences - The popularity of video content has grown in leaps and bounds over the past few years. As video content is especially desirable to younger and niche demographics, video advertising to specific contextual audiences is one more way to keep reaching people without relying on tracking cookies.
- Mobile Ads Over Desktop - The more people rely on their mobile phones for searching, consuming content and making purchases, the more that business advertising budget should be spent on mobile ads. Desktop advertising spending has been declining over the past few years while mobile ads are increasing, mainly due to where, and how people are spending money.
The takeaway in all of this is that as cookies and other third-party tracking features are being slowly phased out due to opt-outs, privacy concerns, and security features, advertising for businesses must develop new ways to reach the same audiences more creatively.
Some of these ideas include going back to earlier days of contextual advertising, while others involve delving deeper into video marketing and finding new ways to get users to opt-in.
Yet because the business advertising landscape is ever-changing, it is likely that even newer ways of reaching audiences without the use of cookies will be developed, so marketers and business owners can build even more on those emerging ideas.