In a digital ecosystem defined by disruption, brands that are waiting for the dust to settle before making decisions related to their long-term advertising strategies need to hear this: The dust is not going to settle. The future of identity and addressability will remain uncertain. However, that doesn’t mean your brand has to be unprepared.
Right now, it’s easy to lose count of the multiple market factors that are concurrently transforming the advertising industry: the potential deprecation of third-party cookies, the emergence of new alternative identifiers, Google’s Privacy Sandbox promises, and significant changes to search as a consequence of new AI technologies. These conditions are creating considerable disruption.
Advertisers have little to no control over the pace or outcome of these marketplace shifts. What they do have control over is how they prepare to maintain addressability in an advertising landscape where change will continue to be the only constant.
Maintaining addressability in the face of uncertainty is possible—and very necessary. But it requires a commitment to three guiding principles that will define success in the addressability landscape of the future.
Principle 1: Success Relies on an ID-Agnostic Approach
Douglas Adams was on to something when he conceived of the Babel fish in “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.” The Babel fish is a small creature that, when placed in someone’s ear, provides them with an instant translation of any language in the universe.
Ultimately, that’s what advertisers are looking for in the digital ecosystem. It’s not that they need everyone to speak the same language. They simply need a means of translating all the languages so they understand what’s going on in a holistic way.
Just because we are nearing the end of third-party cookies doesn't mean the end of user identifiability. Our industry can adapt by building a new infrastructure that recognizes users through various forms of identifiers.
From an advertiser standpoint, that’s means prioritizing an ID-agnostic approach to data, technology, solutions, and partnerships. There are multiple meaningful non-cookie identifiers in the market, and advertisers shouldn’t have to pick and choose among them. They should operate within an interoperable system in which technology helps to connect identifiers and applies business logic to ensure accuracy. Here at Semasio, that’s what we’re working to build.
Principle 2: Success Relies on Flexibility
In the same vein, advertisers must position themselves to be not only ID-agnostic but also flexible. The two concepts are not one and the same. Being agnostic means our industry is doing the work to connect the dots among all the various identity tools out there. Being flexible means we’re connecting those dots in a way that when a dot disappears, or new ones appear, the entire system doesn’t have to be reworked to accommodate the change.
Make no mistake: Just like third-party cookies, other identifiers that are providing addressability today will decline in relevance or disappear altogether. Others will emerge in their place. From an advertiser standpoint, the goal is to be able to pivot as needed, without a wholesale disruption to campaign planning, execution, and measurement.
That said, there are also foundational, future-proof approaches that advertisers can lean into in order to minimize the disruption caused by shifting identifier access. You can learn more about the most stable of these approaches—including first-party data and contextual strategies—in this recent article.
Principle 3: Success Relies on Strategic Partnership and Collaboration
For brands looking to be flexible and ID-agnostic in the face of an uncertain addressability landscape, this becomes the lens through which all partners must be vetted. There are a lot of one-trick ponies within the online ecosystem. Many of them deliver real value, but they’re vulnerable. If regulators (or the ponies’ owners themselves) decide to pull them out of the race, advertisers need to be able to recoup their losses without much fanfare. They can do that with the right partnerships in place.
At Semasio, we’re investing in next-gen audience and contextual capabilities that enable us to connect with consumers in the moments and contexts that matter most. We leverage advanced technologies and data analytics to help marketers reach specific audiences with their campaigns across various media platforms, and we do so in an ID-agnostic and flexible way. We do this because we believe in the advertising industry, and we don’t believe its future should be vulnerable to the whim of regulators and tech titans.
The future of addressability is uncertain, but that doesn’t mean advertisers much be perpetually unprepared. We’re here to bring stability back to the equation, even amid the chaos.
At Semasio, we’re committed to helping advertisers outperform in a privacy-first world.
Semasio expertise lies at the intersection of semantic technology, AI and real-time programmatic targeting, delivering a comprehensive suite of solutions that can synergize audiences, contextual targeting and brand alignment on a unified platform. Our ID-agnostic methodology enables marketers to reach consumers regardless of identification methods, both now and in the evolving future.
