How can you maintain analytics that allow for comprehensive measurement of your website's browsing and visitors?
The first risk for e-retailers with the end of third-party cookies is a loss of "visibility" in traditional analytics tools, in two stages:
- first step, loss of half of the analytics following a strict application of the RGPD, according to which no visit can be counted or measured without consent (our clients estimate the associated loss to be about 40% to 60% of visitors at least)
- second step, loss of the second half if browsers no longer accept third-party analytics cookies (regardless of consent)
To avoid the risk of losing all your analytics, several options already exist.
A recognized French player, AT Internet is already exempt from CNIL consent.
The concept is twofold: firstly, the identifier stored on the browser (in a cookie, of course!) is not shared between several sites. Secondly, when the information required for measurement is sent, this identifier is "encrypted" by a unique key that is not known to AT Internet. It is therefore impossible to use this identifier and the associated information to "find" a browser.
Even if AT Internet is present on 30% of the biggest French websites, the free nature of Google Analytics makes it almost unavoidable on the Internet.
We believe that it will be possible, without going through consent and without changing the analytics platform, to retain the view.
At Potions, we have devised a way to send encrypted information to Google Analytics without storing the identifier in a cookie, but in Indexed DB (the local databases of browsers, accessible only from a "first" domain).
How can you personalise the experience and pathways on your website according to your visitors' profiles?
Without third-party cookies, how to offer a browsing experience that takes into account the visitor's age or gender, location, previous purchases or previous visits...
The end of third-party cookies means the end of profile sharing between websites, but not necessarily the end of personalisation on your website.
To begin with, "first" cookies, i.e. those deposited and used directly by the visited site, are not yet going to disappear. They are often assimilated to so-called "operating" cookies and do not require, for the most part, consent.
Then, it is also possible to use the storage capacities of browsers, and to personalize thebrowsing experience directly from the site.
The information thus stored on each browser is indeed the one generated on the site, and not on other sites. It allows the browser to implement a large number of personalization actions linked to previous or current visits: highlighting products, speeding up the journey, adapting the site.
With this data stored and analyzed locally, it is even possible to generate partial profiles or segments locally, based on the information shared with each site (for example, determining whether a given browser corresponds to a man or a woman in a given age group). This profile or segment, stored only on the browser and accessible only to the site on which it was generated, is no longer associated with an identifier or a third-party database.
The advantage is that this mode of operation requires no cookies and no data extraction. It therefore allows a much greater control of the data generated and used: it is only recorded and stored in one place: in the Internet user's browser.
How do you continue to implement relevant digital marketing?
The area that is likely to be most impacted by the disappearance of third-party cookies is undoubtedly the field of digital marketing or remarketing.
In concrete terms, if the profiles or segments generated (with or without a third-party cookie) on a site can be shared with the user's consent today, this is necessarily done with a "shared" identifier and therefore recognizable on other sites. That is to say with a third party cookie...
More or less complex sharing mechanisms will therefore necessarily be invented by the advertising market, to target online advertising campaigns more or less precisely.
In a world without third-party cookies, certain bridges could already be established between partner sites, for example through common connection identifiers. This is the principle behind "single sign-on" initiatives, which offer the Internet user a single connection identifier between different sites, thus allowing them to contractually share profiles generated at one or other site.
Another approach, which has yet to be developed, would be not to store a shared identifier for each browser, but only identifiers for segments or partial profiles, activated or controlled by the Internet user.
While waiting for their implementation, sites could start by learning how to make good use of the data generated on their domain, to improve thevisitor experience on their site, rather than outside of it...
At Potions, we're even willing to bet that the ROI could turn out to be much better...
