Four solutions to the cookie dilemma – d3con 2023

1. Four case studies for cookie replacements – and in 2024 we will see even more concrete cases here

There’s no such thing as a cheap substitute for cookies—which, while convenient, never quite delivered what they were supposed to. With cookies, we have always looked at devices and not the people in front of them. Therein lies the opportunity. And variety is also a progress push, as current cases advertisers presented at d3con Advertisers Day 2023:

• A) MMM – Media Mix Modeling is experiencing its second spring. It was never really gone. The amount of data it needs is now easier to get. But it still often provides more questions than answers.
• B) How Branding is the most convenient answer: more and more companies are admitting that advertising as a whole increases sales, but rather in the long term and in combination with non-digitally trackable marketing measures.
• C) First-party data is the cheapest and purest solution, because only the third-party cookie dies. McDonald’s even gives the target group socks and coke glasses so that they install the app – and then provide first-party data.
• D) IDs should be the successor solution to cookies, especially from the publisher’s perspective: after logging in, people can be permanently assigned data. And Telekom, as a major advertiser, bought the ID company emetriq some time ago. Whom she is now sending as her representative to the data joint venture of the telcos – it will be on the market in 2024.

2. The personnel carousel is accelerating

Unprofitable companies will find it more difficult to access money, so such technology providers, agencies and marketers will have to continue to reduce staff or close down altogether. Experts with important knowledge are also thrown onto the market – the users, i.e. advertisers, could be happy.

For most employees and also for many entrepreneurs in the young digital industry, it is the first crisis of their working life, they hardly experienced the financial crisis of 2008 and even less the dot-com crisis of 2000 and are understandably unsettled. But the basic rule is simple: Anyone who has a profitable company or creates verifiable added value through their work has a comparatively secure job.

3. Technological development is slowing down

Why is everything so slow? The advertisers gave answers on stage: Large teams not only have to be convinced at Deutsche Bahn. The more participants, the slower decisions and different interests. Such cases of how change can be shaped in the company are encouraging – and will also be needed in 2024.

Which also explains why startups and owner-managed medium-sized companies are so much faster. But because start-ups are running out of money – see above – there will be fewer candidates on the Innovation Stage at d3con 2024 than the record number of ten in 2023. Unless artificial intelligence finds its way into small companies, who want to understand how it works on the conference – with the Walled Gardens one does not talk about AI for ads, but lets them work invisibly and difficult to control in the background.

4. Real progress is more in the details

Programmatic advertising in the metaverse? Sure, that still had to be discussed in 2023 at a conference on the future of marketing. But the answer was just as predictable: only becomes relevant if the “metaworse” builds up reach among users.

The small details that make marketing even more efficient and that you had to listen to carefully at the conference are therefore more relevant: The consumer goods company Reckitt showed how they adapt the display of advertising to the stock levels of their products – “to be detailed”. in 2024!

5. Programmatic across all media

Even if programmatic has not kept every data promise it has made over the past few years, it has firmly established itself as the basic operating system for digital advertising. Digital advertising only?

On average, every second year of d3con there was a new old medium to report, which could now be booked programmatically – exciting cases were the further developments of magazine advertising and digital out of home at d3con 2023. Next year we will hopefully see how this changes in a Platform can be analyzed in a comparable way instead of many small isolated solutions.

6. Old homework – still not done

Does digital advertising money now promote more fake news than real news? Those who want to funnel money down dark channels always seem to be one step ahead of the honest ones.

However, a censorship authority that says what is good and bad does not seem to be the solution to maintaining freedom of information in the true sense. Therefore, in this context too, advertisers must continue to consider individually where they do not want to see their advertising. And once they know that, the challenge lies in the implementation: ad fraud is now easier to fight, but it remains uncomfortable work.

Forecast: The progress in 2023 will be small, so we have to talk about it all the more urgently – also in 2024.

7. Sustainability

What the cookie was five years ago, the topic of sustainability is today: the industry believes it can postpone it or wait it out – and at some point it will become urgent due to external pressure. The core problem: In the future, corporations will also have to show the CO2 consumption of their advertising for their environmental balance sheets. But who is already interested in it and is willing to spend 0.3 percent of the media budget on it, for example? Resubmission: 2024.

8. Mandatory date: d3con on March 12th and 13th, 2024

More advertisers than ever were on site in 2023: d3con has established itself as a must-attend event for them and the marketing industry. The bad news: The location CinemaxX is not growing, it will only be sold out earlier in 2024. The good news: you can buy tickets now – currently at the “Super Early Bird rate”.

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d3con 2023:

Programmatic “from niche topic to absolute standard”