Many marketers and advertisers were flabbergasted recently when Google announced it was shifting gears on the third-party cookie. No longer would Google follow the path of Safari and Firefox, who deprecated the third-party cookie years ago. Instead, they decided to shift to an opt-in/opt-out approach, putting privacy back in the hands of consumers. Sounds like their hearts are in the right place…right?
As we’ve seen with similar consumer-choice mechanisms, consumers really value their privacy. When Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency (ATT) for iOS, in Q3 of 2021, 80% of users opted out of being tracked. In January of this year, eMarketer found that most adults (67%) will turn off cookies to protect their privacy.
Consumers want to hear from marketers and advertisers who can connect them with a product or service that they actually want, while still respecting their privacy. Third-party cookies do help enable this to an extent, but it’s the lack of transparency on what is actually tracked, along with how it’s being bought or sold, that doesn’t sit so well with consumers. Plus, third-party cookies don’t provide for hyper-personalization of a brand’s message, which consumers also expect today.
Identity Resolution solves these issues really well, when done right. Meaning it’s not reliant on third-party cookies to match devices visiting your site with actual consumers in your database and it fully respects the privacy of consumers. It also supercharges the ability to activate the first-party data a brand collects from a consumer to deliver hyper-personalization and far higher conversions than third-party solutions. Here’s how it works.
Identity resolution explained
In its simplest explanation, Identity Resolution can help identify a large percentage of a brand’s website traffic by matching the devices visiting the site back to a consumer’s email address or phone number, without relying solely on third-party cookies. Because Identity Resolution partners track consumer behavior across thousands of websites and ad networks they understand the multiple devices a consumer uses and stores a consumer’s browse, click and purchase behavior at an individual level within their identity graph. The more data they have, the higher likelihood they can identify anonymous traffic. For an example of scale, the Wunderkind Identity Network can identify over 9 billion devices, has over 1 billion consumers and observes over 2 trillion digital browse, click and purchase events in a single year – more than most identity solutions have collected in their existence.
The beauty of identification is that it can provide personalized web experiences and deliver incredibly effective triggered messaging after known consumers bounce from a site. But unfortunately, many returning visitors, including your most valuable loyalty members, may appear as anonymous. In fact, up to 95% of a brand’s traffic will appear as anonymous, even if they are a returning customer or a loyalty member. Here’s a short list from the many reasons why this may happen:
First-Party Cookies Expire:
- If a website’s first-party cookies have expired since the user’s last visit, the site may not recognize the visitor.
- Some visitors may clear their cookies manually, resulting in the loss of any stored identifiers.
Members Log Out:
- Even if your website has a login feature for customers or loyalty members, many sessions will expire when they leave the site or they opt to log out directly. Unless they are forced to log back in on the next session, they may appear anonymous on their next visit as they browse and research. You would lose the ability to optimize and personalize their experience as a known customer.
Visitor Using a New Device:
- If the returning visitor is using a different device (e.g., switching from a laptop to a mobile phone), the website may not recognize them because cookies and device-specific identifiers are not shared across devices.
Visitor Using a Different Browser:
- When a visitor uses a different browser on the same device, the website will not recognize them because cookies are stored per browser, not per device.
Private or Incognito Mode:
- Browsers’ private or incognito modes do not store cookies, cache, or browsing history, making the visitor appear as a new user every time they visit.
Use of Ad Blockers or Privacy Extensions:
- Ad blockers or privacy-focused browser extensions can block tracking cookies and scripts that help identify returning visitors.
Clearing of Browser Cache and Cookies:
- If the user manually clears their browser cache and cookies, it can remove any stored data that the website uses to recognize them.
Change in User’s Browser Settings:
- If the visitor has changed their browser settings to reject cookies or limit tracking, it can result in the website not recognizing them.
Browser Updates or OS Updates:
- Certain updates to a browser or operating system may reset cookies or other identifiers, leading to loss of recognition.
Identity Resolution partners are in the business of combating the above blockers that brands have when trying to identify traffic. By relying on a variety of privacy compliant technologies, these partners have a much higher potential to match the device both to their own identity graph to understand who is visiting all while pinging the brand’s own first-party database to understand if they are indeed an opted-in consumer. This allows their visit to be personalized, including being sent highly personalized emails or texts post-visit to help convert them to a sale.
Additionally, if the device is matched to a known consumer profile in the identity graph but confirmed to be someone not yet opted-in to the brand’s marketing, the identity partner can serve a bespoke offer and value exchange to help convert them into a marketing contact. Collecting as much first-party data opt-ins to the brand’s own database is a core value offering from identity partners like Wunderkind.
Choose a privacy-first and compliant identity partner
The Wunderkind Identity Network stands out as a model for privacy compliance, carefully designed to safeguard consumer data and adhere to stringent regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), and Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL). With nearly 1,000 brand clients as Wunderkind partners – the bulk of which have incredibly stringent security and data policies – it’s clear that we are meeting, if not exceeding, in the area of compliance and transparency.
Furthermore, Wunderkind does not share behavioral data or PII between clients or with any outside parties. This means we do not sell or share email addresses across our client base. Additionally, all customer data is logically separated to prevent commingling or misuse. Everything that is collected in our tag is encrypted in transit and in storage. The Wunderkind Identity Network also does not include any PII and solely uses pseudonymous data to protect consumer privacy.
We have a blog that dives deep into our consent-based approach, including how we comply with laws and regulation regionally and how we offer consumers the ability to opt-out of our identity network and our services.
But if your brand is looking at vendors in the identity space, here are some hard and fast rules that we recommend you adopt and get confirmed before partnering with a solution:
- Consumer behavioral data and/or Publicly Identifiable Information (PII) should never be shared between clients or outside parties. This is key – unlike third-party data, the only one who should have access to this type of data is the vendor. Insights from the data can be shared with a client, but never the data directly.
- Comply with or exceed local legislation and regulation. It may be an alphabet soup of letters, but privacy legislation exists to protect consumers and therefore, your Identity Resolution provider should adhere to every single one of them. That includes GDPR, CCPA, CPRA, CASL and any other ruling that comes along – your provider should be in compliance with all of these depending on the region where both you and they operate and use data.
- CYA. I won’t spell it out, but as long as they’re adhering to external regulations and laws, your Identity Resolution provider should also be keeping their house clean. This means being an industry leader in compliance. At Wunderkind, we maintain our certifications (SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001) and abide by a code determined by the digital advertising alliance and are members of the NAI, IAB and EDAA.
Identity resolution in practice: a client success story
True Botanicals is a clean skincare brand that enables their customers to get that perfect glow, so it’s no wonder that they turned to Wunderkind to help them connect their customers with their skincare products in a way that respects their privacy and consent.
True Botanicals leaned into their owned channels of email and text to communicate with their customers, although they originally had separate vendors doing email and text. They’re also in a very competitive space and the ability to identify customers, then reach them through their owned channels is essential.
With Wunderkind, they were able to bring together their email and text efforts into a cohesive strategy. Even as they navigated the changes around third-party cookies, True Botanicals saw how important these channels were, “If cookies were to disappear today, email and mobile capture would become the most important functionality of our entire site. Without it, we would have no way of tracking who’s been to our site and retargeting them again,” said Molly Delp, VP, eCommerce and Digital Marketing.
After moving from their previous vendor to Wunderkind, True Botanicals saw 122% lift in text revenue, a 2.4x lift in email revenue and 10% of their total digital revenue is attributed to Wunderkind’s network and white glove services.
The Wunderkind Identity Network enabled True Botanicals to identify a significant amount of unknown traffic but also served up bespoke offers to convert more of that traffic into marketable contacts. That acquisition service fills the funnel and creates even more opportunities to drive email and text offers delivering key digital revenue. And it’s all performed in a way that respects their customers’ preferences and privacy.
Third-party cookies, who?
Let’s face it, third-party cookies may never fully go away, but it’s likely that their value will diminish quickly as consumers are soon asked to opt-in or -out on an individual website they visit. But what about marketers looking for solutions to acquire and connect with consumers in a way that respects their privacy and grows revenue for their brand? Identity Resolution has been there all along and there’s never been a better time to add it to your marketing mix.