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Digital Horizons
Brand News: Google's Cookie Conundrum & The Future of Targeted Ads
Get ready for a spirited debate on the pros and cons of targeted advertising and its role in supporting a free, ad-supported internet. As agency owners, we share our unique perspectives on why some level of cookie tracking is crucial for delivering relevant ads and sustaining the digital tools we rely on daily. If you're curious about the evolving landscape of online privacy and advertising, this episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss. Tune in for a lively discussion that will keep you informed and engaged with the latest trends in marketing.
The Digital Horizons Podcast is hosted by:
James Walker - Managing Director Walker Hill Digital
Brian Hastings - Managing Director Nous
All right, welcome back to Brand News. Brand News, our new segment that we're rolling out.
Speaker 2:I have to say I've been enjoying preparing for the Brand News podcast because it actually gets me looking into a bit more marketing news, getting across things that I probably would have let slip or not read the rest of that email or not gone into detail with.
Speaker 1:We have a weekly team meeting each week and we go through a whole bunch of news and I don't normally listen to everybody. And now I'm paying attention, because now I can just steal stuff from that, because everyone's bringing in all the industry updates and things and I typically will zone out for a bit of that. But yeah, this is a good thing to keep up to date.
Speaker 2:So our first article in Brand News is completely counter to an article from last week's Brand News about Google deprecating the third-party cookies. This one is from Search Engine Land Google scraps plan to kill third-party cookies in Chrome. This is fresh hot off the press news. After about four years of promising to get rid of third-party cookie tracking and cookies in general, matching what Apple does with Safari, google has wound back that decision. It kept pushing it one year after another. We're going to get rid of cookies next year, next year and it was coming early 2025, and this is what we spoke about in our brand news last week. But now they've decided they won't deprecate third-party cookies After years of promising to do so. Google will introduce a new experience in Chrome.
Speaker 2:So I imagine it's probably pretty difficult for Google to balance the needs of its users in Chrome for privacy with its revenue stream advertising and the quality advertising opportunities that third-party cookies provide quality advertising opportunities that third-party cookies provide. So they've basically just offered a balance. Privacy advocates aren't going to be happy. Marketers and advertisers are going to be happy. So where do you stand on this? What do?
Speaker 1:you think Well, I mean, I'm always pro-ads because, well, it's firstly our business, but it's also I enjoy getting serve-targeted ads because it helps me discover new things that are relevant to myself.
Speaker 1:So I'm like you know, sometimes you'll turn on TV standard TV, for whatever reason if traveling or whatever, and there's you've got to watch ads and when you see what gets served to you on just a hey blast, everybody in the region with a same ad, you realize how much you appreciate targeted ads, because it's been a long time since I've seen something that's not been relevant to me. So I feel that, as this all rolls out, we're going to get less and less travel on ads and it's probably not going to be as good of an experience as people were sort of hoping for. Although I guess you want your privacy, then just, you'll use Safari or other browsers that are really putting that forward, where you've got this. If they are bringing out a new user experience, they're probably hoping that the experience is better than what's available on other browsers, which is going to then get people more inclined to use it rather than putting privacy first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I agree. I think we enjoy an ad-supported internet. All of these tools that we get to use for seemingly no cost only exist because we're available to advertise to. If we remove all of the capability targeting capability it makes it really difficult for businesses to produce tools and offerings to general users in exchange for blanket advertising without any of that targeting capability. Obviously, there was privacy issues developing over time, but I think if Google can find a balance between privacy and still maintaining a good level of cookie tracking, I'll be happy as an agency owner. But also I think ads will still be accurate and still be relevant. So yeah, I'm happy about it. I'm sure privacy advocates won't be, but you can always just turn off cookies in. I'm sure they'll allow you to turn off cookies in the browser anyway.
Speaker 1:I mean, but also there's many other browsers that are putting this as their priority, and so I guess, if it's important to you, then maybe just use a different browser.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so for all of those panel interviews and white papers you've read on what the death of a cookie will mean for you as marketers, you can kind of scrap that for now. Yeah, for now. Awesome, all right.
Speaker 1:Let's move on to the second one. You almost segued perfectly into this one earlier, but then we kept going and it kind of now is a bit past that, but anyway. So we're talking about how getting served targeted ads, and also that these platforms rely on the advertising to survive. It's what their revenue model is. Is that advertisers pay. They give you free access to the platforms, say example, facebook. Meta has just. This is an article from social media today saying that Meta faces new challenge over its ad-free subscription offering. So what this is, if everyone's heard about, is that Meta is proposing to introduce a paid subscription to use Facebook and Instagram or any of their channels, and then you won't be served ads. So what are your thoughts around that?
Speaker 2:I can see where they're coming from. That approach has been in place for Spotify for years. Since they started. There was the with ads, without ads option. I really get it with Spotify because the ad interrupting your music or your playlist is really quite an invasive interruption from an audio ad. But on Facebook and Instagram the ads aren't as invasive. I do like the types of things I'm introduced to, the services or the products that are introduced. The ads are generally, especially in the Instagram environment, sometimes quite cool or introducing cool products. So I don't know that it will work because I don't know that anyone will want to pay for that quality of content to not see the ads around it With YouTube, for that quality of content, to not see the ads around it. With YouTube, I get it because the content is such high quality. It's longer format video. You don't want the interruptions. With a news feed or like Facebook's feed or Instagram's feed, you can just move past it quite quickly.
Speaker 1:It's not removing much and to pay to remove that I don't see that they'd have a huge audience wanting to do that If the Facebook experience was like I don't know if you ever jump on like a recipe website or something and you're trying to read the recipe and you've got like five pop-ups happening and a whole bunch of shit and none of it's relevant and you just go.
Speaker 1:This is driving me nuts and really detracting from my experience of using this platform. I can see there'd be value in it because if the platform was sticky enough that you'd be willing to pay. But yeah, as you said, I don't feel the ad experience is detracting enough for me to think about. Oh well, I'd like to pay for a subscription for this. The actual article here is talking about that. They're actually running into issues in the EU because they are running this at the moment as a subscription service. But then the challenge that they're having is saying that they're getting people consumer protection company or whatever group. It is saying that they should be doing this for free. So I mean, but then they've got a platform they can turn off the business, exactly. So I mean, then how are they to generate revenue? So I guess that they're trying to get the balance there in the EU and I imagine once they do get it right, then potentially it will be rolled out across the world. But I would definitely prefer to get rid of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there seems to be this global mistake that people think that they deserve these platforms for nothing, that they should just exist and be run without advertising for the benefit of the user. They were only created to make money. They're businesses, right, yeah, they're businesses. So I think back to past campaigns. We used to run for a women's gym where people would comment on the ad, saying why is this ad in my Facebook news feed? I didn't allow you to put it there and there was that sort of belief that it was theirs. They own this environment and it's kind of an invasion of their privacy that an ad has dropped into their news feed. Well, sorry to say, you didn't pay for it. You've just got to use this tool for free and what you're giving up is data and the ability to reach your eyeballs.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe that's the idea behind. Offering the subscription is like, well, you can pay to get rid of it, but then you're not. So maybe it's more of a hey, well, people now will be accepting that. Well, cool Ads are here. I'm not willing to pay to get rid of them, so I'll just accept that that's true. It might add that level of value to it.
Speaker 2:This is what it would cost to have this up and running. Everyone would need to pay this for it to not have ads. So you get to make the choice and, yeah, giving people that path if they're so sick of ads and they still won't choose the no-ad version.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for tuning in for this short form episode. We'll be back again with another one of these next week. Thanks, brian Cheers. See ya, see ya, thank you.