[{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/07\/02\/end-of-third-party-cookies-cpg\/#Article","articleBody":"Ah, the \u201ccookiepocalypse.\u201d A lot of digital ink has been spilled about the end of third party cookies. You almost expect to see folks spinning signs on street corners warning of the coming digital end of days. Not to make light of the topic, though. When Google shuts down support for third party cookies in 2023, there will big implications \u2013 especially for CPG brands. Taking action now could spell the difference between thriving, surviving or getting shipwrecked on the waves rolling in.\nLet\u2019s break out a crystal ball and see what each one of these scenarios might look like in five years.\nEnd of third party cookies: The shipwrecked\nNot to be a downer, but let\u2019s start with the bad news. Companies were warned that their digital advertising could be nearly completely shut off without the ability to target, track, and re-market to consumers using third-party cookies. Some ignored the clarion call and refused to change.\nConvinced they could rely on traditional means to digitally target consumers with essentially same precision they used to buy traditional media, they didn\u2019t exactly go dark.\nBut their click-through rates \u2013 and eventually their return on marketing investment \u2013 had never been worse.\nEven before the pandemic, the CPG industry faced challenges: margin pressure, eroding consumer trust, and an army of small, insurgent agile competitors chipping away at the giants\u2019 market share.\nWhen these companies basically devalued their marketing spend after the end of third-party cookies, the pressure intensified.\nThe downward spiral included revenue shrinkage, share price declines, and the constant looming threat of acquisition.\n \nHow to measure digital activities: Online, mobile, store performance\n   After researching online, 90% of consumers still buy in-store, but most companies only measure activity online. Learn how to measure digital activities and optimize your integrated marketing plan by knowing which activities are driving value and which aren\u2019t.  \nSurviving the end of third party cookies\nThankfully, that wasn\u2019t the case for all CPG brands. Many of them made it through \u2013 but just barely.\nThese are the survivors after the end of third party cookies: CPGs that made the jump and deployed a unified consumer database as the first step in creating a direct relationship with their end users.\nThese brands started off well with a marketing-led initiative to get all their consumer information into one place, much of it coming from first-party data gathered from their e-commerce sites, registration pages, online promotions, and live events. From there, they focused on a single use case: shoring up the digital marketing precision and accuracy losses that came from third-party cookies. The survivors kept click through rates healthy, and made good use of their marketing budgets. But no other department except IT had access to the data, and nothing changed outside marketing. The pressures on these companies continue, particularly in operational efficiency and competitive response to smaller, faster-moving rivals.\n \nAs third party cookies crumble, IT teams must seize 3 opportunities\n   With the upcoming end of third-party cookies, IT teams have a unique opportunity to\u00a0amplify their impact\u00a0on revenue growth and customer experience.\u00a0Read more to find out why\u2026\u00a0\u00a0  \nComing out on top and even better than before\nSome CPG brands made changes that put them ahead, making them the visionary heroes of the cookiepocalypse. They were able to not just get through the end of third-party cookies, but took advantage of the turmoil in the industry to build lasting competitive advantages. They focused on driving all new and existing consumer information into a unified database. For larger companies, this meant tens of millions of consumers. Their masterstroke was putting the data in a robust but accessible customer data platform that could be used across functions in the organization. It created a depth and breadth of consumer insight, forming a natural barrier to entry that smaller competitors couldn\u2019t afford to match.\nThe CDP answered their immediate need for precision in digital marketing campaigns. And it drove down costs by allowing the CPG brands to use their own insights to collaborate with media agencies. But most importantly, other departments outside marketing could also leverage this direct access to ten of millions of consumers:\nNew product development saw its success rate for new introductions skyrocket thanks to direct input from early adopters in the database.\nDemand planning found a silver bullet for accurately predicting promotional lift, using AI to analyze tens of millions of consumer responses to trade and advertising activity.\nThe service desk won awards for knowing what consumers wanted before they phoned into the call center.\n The accessible intelligence flowing out of the CDP allowed these companies to break out away from the long-term malaise facing the industry and compete with the same \u201chumble and hungry\u201d attitude of a start-up.\nBuilding on success\nA properly managed and nurtured unified consumer database can even enable CPG brands to expand out of the consumer goods business altogether. Some of these companies were able to follow the example of Red Bull and build media and entertainment arms, all run using the same consumer intelligence, exploring once unthought-of mergers and partnerships in the media world.\nBut that\u2019s another blog for another day.\nReturning to the present, the end of third-party cookies is still a couple years out. We can\u2019t really foresee the future, but we can offer studied estimates.\nAnd the smart money should be on the brands that embrace a centralized consumer database that allows insights to be shared across departments for a whole company response to the cookie deprecation \u2013 and any other crisis that comes their way.\nRethink customer engagement: Deliver seamless omnichannel CX to win the market. Learn more about direct-to-consumer success HERE.","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/07\/02\/end-of-third-party-cookies-cpg\/#Article_Person","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/07\/02\/end-of-third-party-cookies-cpg\/#Article_Person_ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/23x6xj3o92m9361dbu2ij362-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Sunny-1597776689708-150x150.jpg"},"name":"Sunny Neely","sameAs":["https:\/\/twitter.com\/sunnyneely","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/sunny-neely-b1183b\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/sunny-neely\/"},"dateModified":"2021-12-14T18:09:31+00:00","datePublished":"2021-07-02T05:02:03+00:00","description":"What will the end of third party cookies mean for CPG companies? Three scenarios that we might see five years from now.","headline":"5 years after the end of third party cookies, envisioning heroes amid the wreckage","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/07\/02\/end-of-third-party-cookies-cpg\/#Article_ImageObject","height":"630","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/no-cookies_1200x375-1200x630.jpg","width":"1200"},"mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/07\/02\/end-of-third-party-cookies-cpg\/","name":"5 years after the end of third party cookies, envisioning heroes amid the wreckage","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/","additionalType":"https:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/wiki\/Q1193236","description":"Relevant, timely information & analysis on commerce trends, both consumer-facing and B2B.","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/23x6xj3o92m9361dbu2ij362-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/themes\/hybris_foc\/assets\/images\/layout\/logo-new-2x.png?_=1","height":"96","url":"https:\/\/23x6xj3o92m9361dbu2ij362-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/themes\/hybris_foc\/assets\/images\/layout\/logo-new-2x.png?_=1","width":"500"},"name":"The Future of Customer Engagement and Experience","sameAs":["https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/a-call-for-a-better-experience\/id1479742201","https:\/\/twitter.com\/FutureOfCEC","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/groups\/4844282","https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/feed\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/"},"url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/07\/02\/end-of-third-party-cookies-cpg\/#Article"},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"2021","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"07","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/\/07\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"02","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/\/07\/\/02\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"name":"5 years after the end of third party cookies, envisioning heroes amid the wreckage","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/07\/02\/end-of-third-party-cookies-cpg\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]