January 29, 2020 • 27 mins
Privacy concerns are driving big changes for marketers across the web. Recently, Google announced they would be removing 3rd party cookies from the market-leading Chrome browser.
In this episode of The Summit, Rob Bunting and Kyle Hamer discuss what this will mean for businesses both large and small. While many believe this will only lead to improved privacy, there are concerns with the next generation of user tracking. Find out how this will impact you and what you can do to prepare your business for the next evolution of browser tracking and marketing attribution.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kyle Hamer (00:02):
Hello, welcome to the summit podcast where we
bring you knowledge and insightsfrom industry leaders and
professionals.
Today I'm with my good friendRob bunting of Cincinnati.
I'm marketing group, a 22 yearindustry professional in digital
marketing and 16 years on hisown managing millions of dollars
with the Google apps.
Today's topic was, we're goingto talk about the changes that
(00:24):
Google has made to their cookiepolicy and what this means for
you.
Rob, welcome to the show.
Rob Bunting (00:29):
Thanks Kyle.
Happy to be here.
Kyle Hamer (00:31):
We're excited to have you.
This is your, this is yoursecond time on the show.
Yeah.
First time we talked about, youknow, the things you needed to
know for Pay Per Click and wewant to leverage your many, many
years in the industry to tell uswhat's going on with people.
So what's your, what's your hottake here?
Rob Bunting (00:47):
The hot take.
And we're talking about Google's, uh, announcement a couple of
weeks ago that they're going tobe dropping or blocking third
party cookies from their Chromebrowser in 2020 to two years on.
So understanding what a thirdparty cookie is, or a first
party cookie.
So, uh, cookies are used.
(01:09):
Uh, like when you save yourpassword in a website, it uses a
cookie to do that.
So first party cookies getstored on your device, your
phone or your computer.
What do you visit a website at[inaudible] store?
Things like your password oritems that you viewed on the
eCommerce site, things likethat.
Third party cookies areadvertisers, ad networks or
(01:32):
external content providers thatare cookie and you, uh, so when
you go to site a, you might showup on site B and there might be
cookies from your interaction onsite a and that's how
advertisers can track you andshow you ads based on your
browsing history or interests,things you've searched on, stuff
(01:53):
of that nature.
Kyle Hamer (01:55):
So, all right, so you've given us a good
definition of what cookies areand how they're tracking.
Um, what was the, what was theofficial announcement Google
made?
They made that they're going toend all third party cookies.
Rob Bunting (02:06):
Is that right?
In the Chrome web browser by2022.
So Chrome is the world's mostpopular web browser.
A Safari from Apple[inaudible]Firefox have already blocked
third party cookies.
And since Google controls thelargest market share, this is
really gonna[inaudible] put abig damper on third party
(02:26):
cookies overall.
So over the next two years,marketers have to figure out
other ways to track people otherthan third party cookies.
And many of the different onlineadvertising, uh, vehicles or
targeting methods that existtoday won't work if they're
based on third party cookies atthat time.
(02:48):
2022.
Kyle Hamer (02:49):
So when we say third party cookies, uh, what's the
difference between a third partyin a first party cookie as it
relates to how Google mightclassify that?
Can you, can you share?
Sure.
Rob Bunting (03:01):
Yeah.
So again, first party cookie, ifyou're logged into a certain
site, and this is kind of wherein some ways it benefits
Facebook, or at least a lot ofpeople use, they think it will,
um, a first party cookie, let'ssay I go to xyz.com, well, XYZ
dot, whatever it might be,cron.com, cincinnati.com USA
today.com, espn.com whatever.
(03:23):
Uh, if I go to espn.com ESPNmight cookie me, like I might
have a login and password ESPNso that they can, I can follow
all my favorite teams especiallyand uh, in, in ESPN world that
helps them give you content onespn.com that more matches your
interests.
(03:44):
If let's say an advertiser wantsto advertise on espn.com they're
a third party, they don'tnecessarily have a relationship
with a person who's logged inand has an account, espn.com so
if, uh, if I can run a thirdpart, if I'm ESPN allows third
party cookies that enables me toadvertise on espn.com as a third
(04:06):
party, I might be Coca Cola andI might have a third party
cookie that says that the Kyleis a chiefs fan and uh, or, or
maybe, um, a, what is it, a fanduel, uh, or um, fanatics.com.
Oh, Tom Kyle's a chiefs fan.
So fanatics might say, let'sserve chief spanners to Kyle
(04:30):
because he's a two span evenwhile he's on espn.com.
So you may be have neverpurchased anything from fanatics
before, but fanatics wants youto buy some chief stuff to
prepare for the Superbowl, sothey're going to target you with
the chiefs@relatedadonespn.comso that's all third party
cookies work versus first partycookies.
If ESPN served the ad to you onespn.com they'd be doing some of
(04:53):
the first party cooking.
If fanatics did, that'd be likethey're using a third party
cookie too,
Kyle Hamer (05:02):
I think.
I think this is, this issomething that for a lot of
people is, is challenging towrap their head around because
they're like, well, if ifMozilla Firefox and Safari have
already made this change andGoogle is now announcing that
it's going to take another threeyears for them to make the
change, like what is it?
That's really the net positivebenefit for me as as a consumer.
(05:24):
Question one then question two,the follow up question that is
is how is it really going toimpact my day to day operations
for my business, wherever it'sat.
Rob Bunting (05:32):
Okay.
Well, I think there's been a lotof articles in the press and
that's just it.
I think you're right.
A lot of people have their hardtime, particularly the general
public getting their head aroundthis or they, I think it's kind
of common knowledge now thatthere's these things called
cookies that are on yourcomputer and this is how Google
and other companies are trackingyou.
And understandably, there'vebeen a lot of consumer privacy
(05:55):
advocates that have been saying,Oh Whoa, you know, these
companies know too much about meand this is an invasion of my
privacy.
They have such targeted ads, dididentify me as an individual
person and some people may feelit's kind of creepy.
There are benefits to cookiesobviously, but a lot of people
are just trying to, from aconsumer privacy standpoint,
(06:18):
it's the same.
It's just thinking, uh, some ofthese companies have gotten to
perhaps good at targeting peopledirectly, so they maybe need to
reign it in a little bit.
Uh, unfortunately some of thealternatives might be even more
invasive or invasive than thirdparty cookies.
So that's interesting.
(06:39):
So before we answered the backhalf of that question, let's,
let's talk a little bit aboutthe things that you think might
be, um, dangerous.
Like what could be moredangerous than a cookie for your
privacy?
Well, fingerprinting is part ofthe technology or packet
sniffing.
And again, I'm not a coder ordeveloper guy.
(07:00):
Fingerprinting is when, uh, adproviders get access to a user's
information such as what devicethey have, what fonts they
haven't solved.
So in other words, a lot of thisinformation's a Google
analytics.
For example, right now you're ona certain model of computer.
You've got all your browsersettings set at a certain
(07:20):
amount, your IP address.
So, um, fingerprinting couldallow websites, um, or
advertisers, they could identifya lot more about you than even
just cookies do.
Even if you're blocking offcookies or delete them on a
regular basis, you can't deleteyour fingerprint.
You can't clear it.
So a sites can actually tracksomebody without really their
(07:45):
consent or an Anderson really noway, uh, to, to opt out of it.
So you can, you can see a personcan set their cookie settings at
certain levels, but they can't,um, fingerprint themselves.
And then there's deep packetinspection.
So, uh, again, if you thinkabout brat, and again, I'm not a
technical guy but I just tounderstand this at a very basic
(08:07):
level, but, uh, you know,different internet service
providers like Verizon commodifyusers, data packets and covertly
track people around the internetwithout letting them know or
letting them opt out just by,again looking at the technical
background of who's coming inand understanding things about
your machine that you can'treally hide what type of
(08:29):
computer you're on, your IPaddress and stuff like that.
Wow.
So, so we go from third partytracking, which you said to a
degree we control to big brotherand not really have any control
over what people are seeing froma, from a[inaudible] from a
(08:49):
shift here though, it seems likeGoogle is trying to just get in
line with what everybody else isdoing, what's,
Kyle Hamer (08:56):
what's Microsoft and being doing
Rob Bunting (08:58):
to some extent.
Well, um, well, Microsoft hastheir browser.
It's funny you asked that.
I just read an article thismorning.
So Microsoft of course hasMicrosoft office and there's
Microsoft free office three 65,while these three 65 pro plus a
version of the software whichcompetes with Google's G suite
(09:19):
of products, uh, just a coupleof days ago, uh, in office three
65 pro plus, it wasautomatically changing people's
default search engine fromGoogle to being in the software.
So that's kind of it.
Again, we've, we've seen beforewhere Microsoft, uh, years and
years ago of course was sued forputting, make an internet
(09:41):
Explorer, the default browserand windows and Netscape back
then.
And so that's not fair.
That's, that's uncompetitive.
So now, I mean it's, it'sliterally if you have, if you're
using office three 65 pro plus,it's kind of designed to work
with being, so it's changingpeople's default search engine
to being a, and then now I Tcompanies have been scrambling
(10:02):
the past few days to try andchange that back and not do it.
So, um, there's different ways.
That's one way to do it.
It's just she again changedsomebody's computer outside of
cookies to kind of get them touse either Google or being or
different products.
Um, Microsoft and Google are nowreally being referred to
(10:24):
probably be Facebook and Googlein particular are being defined
now as walled gardens.
Way back in the late nineties,we used to talk about AOL as a
walled garden.
Once you are logged into the AOLservice you were kind of in AOL
is universe.
Well now obviously if you go tofacebook.com Facebook is serving
all the ads on facebook.com.
(10:45):
But also if someone is loggedinto Facebook on their machine,
they're tracking you whereveryou go because you're logged in,
you know, on Facebook, on yourmachine.
So they can serve me first partycookies even if you're on
another site.
So Google's ad network is thebiggest, uh, Microsoft is trying
to compete with that in terms ofsearch, but also on the, on the
display side.
(11:06):
So your question of what areMicrosoft and being doing,
really the duopoly of onlineadvertising is not Google,
Microsoft, it's Google andFacebook.
From an advertiser'sperspective.
That's what really dominates theindustry.
Kyle Hamer (11:20):
Well, right.
I mean the Google, Google,Google and Facebook dominate.
You said something that's reallyinteresting here.
What does this, what does thismean for third party cookies or
third party tracking that folksmay use for their own internal
analytics or conversion pieces?
What it, like, what does thismean for, for tools, say like a
(11:42):
marketing automation tools likea Salesforce marketing cloud or
HubSpot or some of these others.
Rob Bunting (11:47):
Any of those things that are cookie based.
And one of the big keys I thinkin like you and me and some of
our clients and we've workedtogether, everybody, just so you
know, uh, so I'm kind offamiliar with some of Kyle's
clients.
Uh, multitouch attribution is,is much harder if you block
third party cookies.
So if you think about if someonesees an ad and then makes a
purchase, a lot of times peoplego through more than one step or
(12:11):
more than one visit to a websiteto make a purchase.
So someone might do a search,they might, and then they might
sign up for a newsletter later.
They might see a banner.
So trying to attribute theactual sale to the source gets a
lot harder without third partycookies.
Uh, one of the things, forexample, banner or display
(12:32):
advertisers, uh, I mentionedyour example earlier of going to
espn.com and see the banner fromfanatics to purchase chiefs
items.
So if, if, if you do away withthird party cookies and you
click on that ad, uh, fanaticsmight have a harder time
tracking that to the sourcewithout a third party cookie.
(12:54):
They wouldn't know which adcampaign was the actual ad that
you saw.
So if you see a banner, don'tclick on it, but then visit
fanatics two days later andpurchase, that's called a view
through conversion instead of aclick through conversion because
you viewed the banner.
Well that type of attribution ofdisplay campaigns is gone
without third party cookies ormultitouch attribution.
(13:19):
Particularly for business tobusiness advertisers, people may
come to a website three or fourtimes before they actually
convert, and if you wipe outthird party cookies, it's much
harder to track, okay, we knowwe got to lead well, which ad
did it come from?
And this affects advertisers ofall sizes.
Um, and one co one entity thatwe haven't really talked about
(13:41):
yet is publishers.
So think about a newspaper.
Uh, newspapers mostly rely onthird party ad networks to sell
their advertising.
They can sell some of itthemselves.
Uh, and a lot of journalistshave come out and said, this is
really tough.
So, uh, Laura Bassett, who's ajournalist who's written for a
(14:03):
number of top magazines, GQ andothers, she put out a tweet the
day this was announced and itsaid a quote, Google eliminated
third party cookies isdevastating for news publishers
ad revenue at a time when thejournalism business model is
already in crisis.
When Firefox did it in Germany,publisher revenue dropped 15%.
This can't happen.
(14:24):
Hashtag saved journalism.
And that may sound melodramaticand kind of, you know, alarmist,
but I think it's absolutelyright.
I think, uh, news newspublishers and other, um,
journalists, bloggers, a lot oftheir money comes from ad
networks.
So, uh, this, this could bereally devastating because
(14:45):
advertisers are going to be lesslikely to want to advertise on
these sites if they can't trackthe, the performance of those
campaigns
Kyle Hamer (14:54):
specifically the view through you're talking
through, right?
Cause if I convert on that side,I can track that.
Sure.
Click click the conversion tomultitouch attribution.
Rob Bunting (15:04):
Because again, if you, again, using the fanatics
example, if a ESPN, you considerthat a publisher, you could
consider that new site, right or, or[inaudible] dot com or
cincinnati.com USA today,[inaudible] dot com if it makes
it harder for fanatics to figureout what ad led to a sale, they
might be less likely if at thatnews, let's say, uh, the local
(15:28):
newspaper, it's showing ads fromCritio and Critio is using a lot
of third party cookies andtherefore, or if you're doing a
retargeting campaign throughCritio, let's say, so let's say
you went to fin addicts and youlooked at chief stuff but you
didn't buy and then you see abanner the next day from
fanatics, it says now 50% offCheech merchandise, click here.
(15:51):
And if you were to click and gothrough, that's what we call a
remarketing or retargetingbanner.
Uh, if Critio can't cookie youanymore, they can't serve you
that banner.
And it kind of wipes out thatkind of campaign.
So, and that's why the day thiscame out a couple of weeks ago,
Critio, which is one of theleading a book ad networks that
(16:12):
competes with Google in twodays, their stock drops 24% and
hit a 52 week low because a,this announcement that Google is
dropping third party cookiesupport.
So it could really devastate alot of other competing ad
networks and the companies thatuse them.
And it forces a lot of usmarketers and advertisers to
(16:33):
spend more on Google if thereare, or Facebook, the few big ad
networks that are left.
A lot of the smaller ad networksjust, well our are in trouble in
that case
Kyle Hamer (16:46):
from a, I'm a site owner, I'm a person who, you
know, uses cookies to deploy onmy site.
What does this impact, whatimpact does this have for me?
Technically it will call theconfused, just supposedly stop
or do we know
Rob Bunting (17:00):
if first party cookies are not effective?
First party cookies are stillokay.
It's the third party cookiesthat Google is talking about
doing away with first partycookies will still exist.
Kyle Hamer (17:13):
Sounds like, sounds like it's, um, it's something
that we've dealt with or alreadykind of dealing with, with, with
the Safari browser and Mozillabrowsers specifically.
Rob Bunting (17:25):
Mmm, yes.
But again, cause curl curlworldwide, I think Chrome has
like 60 or 70% market share.
So yes, absolutely.
This has affected Safari and uh,because it's in Safari and
Firefox.
So yes, some of these appnetworks in particular, for
example, critical or havealready been struggling and this
(17:47):
kind of accelerates that.
So yes, isn't a totally newthing.
I'm looking at, you know,looking at like a five-year
stock chart for Critio.
And you know, about three yearsago Critio was$54 a share.
Now it's 14.
So I give you an idea of how inan era when internet advertising
is continuing to increasesignificantly trivial, one of
(18:09):
the biggest app networks, stockhas plummeted or gone down.
It was like 75% in the lastthree years.
Um, so yeah, it just kind ofexacerbates the trend in that
regard.
Kyle Hamer (18:26):
It'd be, it'd be really interesting to see, see
what shakes out and how Googledefines first party versus third
party.
Because I think too, um, tomany, many companies, business
to business or otherwise this,this appears to have far
reaching impact, it'll have farreaching impact into account
based marketing.
This will have far reachingimpact into a conversion
(18:50):
attribution, mixed marketing,mixed modeling.
This will have, um, impact into,you know, speed, delete or
conversions to your point ofretargeting, you know, leaving,
leaving leads.
There are people that are morelikely to close, you know, out
hanging in the balance or youknow, if you take a monopolistic
(19:10):
or a, you know, uh, antitrustperspective, it's Google doing
exactly what Microsoft did whenthey put office on every PC that
came out.
Right?
Like, it's, it's probablywell-intended, but there are far
reaching consequences that wedon't fully appreciate yet.
Rob Bunting (19:30):
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
Um, uh, I, uh, there was agentleman from India named show
moron Dasgupta.
He works for a D and I F whichis a data analytics platform
based in Mumbai, India.
And he mentioned that, um, theydo one thing about putting this
on a bit, let me give a quotehere.
(19:52):
However, I'm sure that Googledoesn't want to force the death,
the cookies too quickly,thereby, and thereby attract
antitrust attention end quote.
So just like you were sayingthere, uh, by kind of, they're
trying to kind of do this insuch a way that doesn't really
bring in a lot of, uh, antitrust, uh, concerns.
(20:13):
Cause obviously there's alreadytalk about breaking up Google
and Facebook right out there inthe, in the, this is world.
So this would kind of, theydon't want to kind of overdo it.
Um, and I have a quote here fromMatt Kaiser of a Liveintent for
Google, Google and YouTube isone of the majority of their
money comes from, and firstparty cookies from YouTube will
be unaffected by this change andclose.
(20:35):
So it's exactly right when youthink about doing a retargeting
campaign in Google, which I've,I run several, um, that's done
via putting people in anaudience and Google analytics
and a Google conserve its adsall over its network.
So, but they're not worriedabout it so much because they
mostly rely on first partycookies.
It's their competitors thatreally rely on third party
(20:58):
cookies.
I guess as far as marketers,we're just gonna have to figure
out new technologies that arenot particularly invasive that
help help to get around this.
We kind of have to adapt.
So it'll be interesting to seewhat technologies come out other
than fingerprinting packetsniffing.
Like I talked about.
Kyle Hamer (21:18):
Well in the, in the, you know, the evolution of a
cookie cookie wasn't around 22years ago when the internet and
things you were doing forstarted.
That was an evolution of kind ofweb 2.0 right.
Which is this new, let's createa more personalized experience.
Maybe we're headed into webthree.
Dot.
Oh
Rob Bunting (21:34):
yeah.
Yeah.
I again, I think things willdefinitely evolve not to sound,
uh, you know, maybe the skyisn't falling as badly as it is
for some of these adenoids andpublishers, but I think they
have to act fairly quickly tosurvive.
And as that quote from thejournalist mentioned that,
again, we've seen it, newspapersaround the country are going out
(21:55):
of business.
A print circulation is obviouslydown for both newspapers and
magazines.
And a lot of new sites are, theydon't simply make as much money,
uh, from digital advertising asthey did in the old print world.
Uh, and anything that lessenstheir revenue at this time is
really, really critical.
A lot of newspapers around thecountry that haven't gone out of
(22:17):
business heavily skeleton staffs, uh, they've really cut back
their newsrooms, uh, and theprivate knows, you know, new low
in it, particularly localwebsites, local news sites, uh,
is, is tough.
So yeah, as marketers and uh,companies that are, you know,
agencies like myself that aretrying to help companies of all
(22:38):
sizes, not just large ones,figure out how to spend our ad
dollars wisely and generatesales.
Uh, this is gonna really forceus to develop some new
techniques that maybe we don'thave that, uh, yet.
And it'll be curious to see howit shakes out.
Be interesting.
Kyle Hamer (22:57):
It will be very curious to see how it shakes
out.
Um, some of the stuff, some ofthe stuff that you've mentioned,
you know, if you, if you spendany time thinking about
fingerprinting or deep packetlistening, those types of things
, um, if you spend more thanfive minutes thinking about it
and you think about the, notonly the, the, um, the business
implications and creativityrequired in order to pull that
(23:17):
stuff off, but the, um, thepotential security threat and
maybe additional, uh, you know,we, we live in an environment
where terrorism is moved maybefrom what you see in the streets
to what's happening on your PCwith more and more, uh, viruses
being launched at the, I mean, Imet a company the other day
(23:41):
where the gentleman is doingcybersecurity for floors in the
unit, right?
So you start to think about deeppacket listening and I can track
this stuff all the way down tothe machines.
Bob's handheld or you know, thesorting machine inside the
factory.
It starts to become reallyinteresting.
(24:03):
Um, what the next evolution of,of security, privacy and
protection is going to meanbeyond just advertisers, right?
It's not, not just advertisers.
They're going to have to thinkabout this.
It's, it's going to have bigimplications across, I would
say, the next 20 years of, of'eminternet behavior.
Rob Bunting (24:25):
Yeah.
As we've discussed this, thisdoesn't just affect advertisers
and marketers like us and ourclients.
This affects journalists.
This affects site owners.
As you said, there's privacyconcerns and there's been so
many articles that could thirdparty cookies are bad.
And now it's like, well, what'sthe alternative?
Guess what?
In some cases, from a privacystandpoint, the alternative
(24:47):
might be worse.
Again, you can at least adjustthe browser, setting your cookie
settings in your browser.
You can't, uh, affect yourfingerprint studies or your data
packet settings.
So it will be, um, just kind ofunintended consequences of this
push for privacy.
Uh, if anything it, and gettingkind of, particularly since
(25:07):
we're talking about Google andthat was the Genesis of this
conversation was Google'sannouncement.
You know, they're blocking thirdparty cookies and grow.
It helps them consolidate theirpower.
I mean, they have 70% marketshare on desktop worldwide and
41% on mobile.
Uh, that's a, that's huge powerright there.
Kyle Hamer (25:29):
It's quite a bit of leverage and it does create
market opportunity for otherpeople.
So I mean, it'd be, it'd beinteresting, you know, as one is
one power grows, usually there'sa opportunity for healthy
competition being introduced inthis.
We'll find out.
Hopefully.
Yeah.
Rob Bunting (25:44):
And again, I mentioned AOL earlier.
You know, when I got into theindustry, AOL, half the people
in America were on AOL that wereonline.
So, uh, the.com when I wasworking for, we spent most of
our money on all, of course, AOLis no longer with us as
technology evolved, people andcompanies that were dominant
players in 1998, some of whomare no longer with us.
(26:05):
And who knows where Google willbe five or 10 or 15 years ago
now from now as dominant asGoogle and Facebook are right
now.
Um, it's not an ironcladguarantee.
There could be as dominant
Kyle Hamer (26:17):
in the future.
Well, I mean it, uh, that's boththe beauty of, of American
capitalism and one of theterrifying things about American
capitalism.
You always got to compete andyou always got to find a new way
to reinvent yourself.
Otherwise you could go the wayof the Dodo, like AOL time
Warner and some of those othercompanies that didn't, didn't
(26:38):
make the internet transitionvery well.
Exactly.
Well, Rob, I want to, I want tothank you for being a guest
today and providing some, someinsight.
I think the takeaways for me arestay vigilant and keep watching.
Look for creative in new waysand who knows, maybe the, the
answer to the third party couldbe doing away with new way.
(27:07):
Great.
Val, thanks for having me.
I appreciate it.
Alright.
Hello, welcome to the summit podcast where we
bring you knowledge and insightsfrom industry leaders and
professionals.
Today I'm with my good friendRob bunting of Cincinnati.
I'm marketing group, a 22 yearindustry professional in digital
marketing and 16 years on hisown managing millions of dollars
with the Google apps.
Today's topic was, we're goingto talk about the changes that
(00:24):
Google has made to their cookiepolicy and what this means for
you.
Rob, welcome to the show.
Rob Bunting (00:29):
Thanks Kyle.
Happy to be here.
Kyle Hamer (00:31):
We're excited to have you.
This is your, this is yoursecond time on the show.
Yeah.
First time we talked about, youknow, the things you needed to
know for Pay Per Click and wewant to leverage your many, many
years in the industry to tell uswhat's going on with people.
So what's your, what's your hottake here?
Rob Bunting (00:47):
The hot take.
And we're talking about Google's, uh, announcement a couple of
weeks ago that they're going tobe dropping or blocking third
party cookies from their Chromebrowser in 2020 to two years on.
So understanding what a thirdparty cookie is, or a first
party cookie.
So, uh, cookies are used.
(01:09):
Uh, like when you save yourpassword in a website, it uses a
cookie to do that.
So first party cookies getstored on your device, your
phone or your computer.
What do you visit a website at[inaudible] store?
Things like your password oritems that you viewed on the
eCommerce site, things likethat.
Third party cookies areadvertisers, ad networks or
(01:32):
external content providers thatare cookie and you, uh, so when
you go to site a, you might showup on site B and there might be
cookies from your interaction onsite a and that's how
advertisers can track you andshow you ads based on your
browsing history or interests,things you've searched on, stuff
(01:53):
of that nature.
Kyle Hamer (01:55):
So, all right, so you've given us a good
definition of what cookies areand how they're tracking.
Um, what was the, what was theofficial announcement Google
made?
They made that they're going toend all third party cookies.
Rob Bunting (02:06):
Is that right?
In the Chrome web browser by2022.
So Chrome is the world's mostpopular web browser.
A Safari from Apple[inaudible]Firefox have already blocked
third party cookies.
And since Google controls thelargest market share, this is
really gonna[inaudible] put abig damper on third party
(02:26):
cookies overall.
So over the next two years,marketers have to figure out
other ways to track people otherthan third party cookies.
And many of the different onlineadvertising, uh, vehicles or
targeting methods that existtoday won't work if they're
based on third party cookies atthat time.
(02:48):
2022.
Kyle Hamer (02:49):
So when we say third party cookies, uh, what's the
difference between a third partyin a first party cookie as it
relates to how Google mightclassify that?
Can you, can you share?
Sure.
Rob Bunting (03:01):
Yeah.
So again, first party cookie, ifyou're logged into a certain
site, and this is kind of wherein some ways it benefits
Facebook, or at least a lot ofpeople use, they think it will,
um, a first party cookie, let'ssay I go to xyz.com, well, XYZ
dot, whatever it might be,cron.com, cincinnati.com USA
today.com, espn.com whatever.
(03:23):
Uh, if I go to espn.com ESPNmight cookie me, like I might
have a login and password ESPNso that they can, I can follow
all my favorite teams especiallyand uh, in, in ESPN world that
helps them give you content onespn.com that more matches your
interests.
(03:44):
If let's say an advertiser wantsto advertise on espn.com they're
a third party, they don'tnecessarily have a relationship
with a person who's logged inand has an account, espn.com so
if, uh, if I can run a thirdpart, if I'm ESPN allows third
party cookies that enables me toadvertise on espn.com as a third
(04:06):
party, I might be Coca Cola andI might have a third party
cookie that says that the Kyleis a chiefs fan and uh, or, or
maybe, um, a, what is it, a fanduel, uh, or um, fanatics.com.
Oh, Tom Kyle's a chiefs fan.
So fanatics might say, let'sserve chief spanners to Kyle
(04:30):
because he's a two span evenwhile he's on espn.com.
So you may be have neverpurchased anything from fanatics
before, but fanatics wants youto buy some chief stuff to
prepare for the Superbowl, sothey're going to target you with
the chiefs@relatedadonespn.comso that's all third party
cookies work versus first partycookies.
If ESPN served the ad to you onespn.com they'd be doing some of
(04:53):
the first party cooking.
If fanatics did, that'd be likethey're using a third party
cookie too,
Kyle Hamer (05:02):
I think.
I think this is, this issomething that for a lot of
people is, is challenging towrap their head around because
they're like, well, if ifMozilla Firefox and Safari have
already made this change andGoogle is now announcing that
it's going to take another threeyears for them to make the
change, like what is it?
That's really the net positivebenefit for me as as a consumer.
(05:24):
Question one then question two,the follow up question that is
is how is it really going toimpact my day to day operations
for my business, wherever it'sat.
Rob Bunting (05:32):
Okay.
Well, I think there's been a lotof articles in the press and
that's just it.
I think you're right.
A lot of people have their hardtime, particularly the general
public getting their head aroundthis or they, I think it's kind
of common knowledge now thatthere's these things called
cookies that are on yourcomputer and this is how Google
and other companies are trackingyou.
And understandably, there'vebeen a lot of consumer privacy
(05:55):
advocates that have been saying,Oh Whoa, you know, these
companies know too much about meand this is an invasion of my
privacy.
They have such targeted ads, dididentify me as an individual
person and some people may feelit's kind of creepy.
There are benefits to cookiesobviously, but a lot of people
are just trying to, from aconsumer privacy standpoint,
(06:18):
it's the same.
It's just thinking, uh, some ofthese companies have gotten to
perhaps good at targeting peopledirectly, so they maybe need to
reign it in a little bit.
Uh, unfortunately some of thealternatives might be even more
invasive or invasive than thirdparty cookies.
So that's interesting.
(06:39):
So before we answered the backhalf of that question, let's,
let's talk a little bit aboutthe things that you think might
be, um, dangerous.
Like what could be moredangerous than a cookie for your
privacy?
Well, fingerprinting is part ofthe technology or packet
sniffing.
And again, I'm not a coder ordeveloper guy.
(07:00):
Fingerprinting is when, uh, adproviders get access to a user's
information such as what devicethey have, what fonts they
haven't solved.
So in other words, a lot of thisinformation's a Google
analytics.
For example, right now you're ona certain model of computer.
You've got all your browsersettings set at a certain
(07:20):
amount, your IP address.
So, um, fingerprinting couldallow websites, um, or
advertisers, they could identifya lot more about you than even
just cookies do.
Even if you're blocking offcookies or delete them on a
regular basis, you can't deleteyour fingerprint.
You can't clear it.
So a sites can actually tracksomebody without really their
(07:45):
consent or an Anderson really noway, uh, to, to opt out of it.
So you can, you can see a personcan set their cookie settings at
certain levels, but they can't,um, fingerprint themselves.
And then there's deep packetinspection.
So, uh, again, if you thinkabout brat, and again, I'm not a
technical guy but I just tounderstand this at a very basic
(08:07):
level, but, uh, you know,different internet service
providers like Verizon commodifyusers, data packets and covertly
track people around the internetwithout letting them know or
letting them opt out just by,again looking at the technical
background of who's coming inand understanding things about
your machine that you can'treally hide what type of
(08:29):
computer you're on, your IPaddress and stuff like that.
Wow.
So, so we go from third partytracking, which you said to a
degree we control to big brotherand not really have any control
over what people are seeing froma, from a[inaudible] from a
(08:49):
shift here though, it seems likeGoogle is trying to just get in
line with what everybody else isdoing, what's,
Kyle Hamer (08:56):
what's Microsoft and being doing
Rob Bunting (08:58):
to some extent.
Well, um, well, Microsoft hastheir browser.
It's funny you asked that.
I just read an article thismorning.
So Microsoft of course hasMicrosoft office and there's
Microsoft free office three 65,while these three 65 pro plus a
version of the software whichcompetes with Google's G suite
(09:19):
of products, uh, just a coupleof days ago, uh, in office three
65 pro plus, it wasautomatically changing people's
default search engine fromGoogle to being in the software.
So that's kind of it.
Again, we've, we've seen beforewhere Microsoft, uh, years and
years ago of course was sued forputting, make an internet
(09:41):
Explorer, the default browserand windows and Netscape back
then.
And so that's not fair.
That's, that's uncompetitive.
So now, I mean it's, it'sliterally if you have, if you're
using office three 65 pro plus,it's kind of designed to work
with being, so it's changingpeople's default search engine
to being a, and then now I Tcompanies have been scrambling
(10:02):
the past few days to try andchange that back and not do it.
So, um, there's different ways.
That's one way to do it.
It's just she again changedsomebody's computer outside of
cookies to kind of get them touse either Google or being or
different products.
Um, Microsoft and Google are nowreally being referred to
(10:24):
probably be Facebook and Googlein particular are being defined
now as walled gardens.
Way back in the late nineties,we used to talk about AOL as a
walled garden.
Once you are logged into the AOLservice you were kind of in AOL
is universe.
Well now obviously if you go tofacebook.com Facebook is serving
all the ads on facebook.com.
(10:45):
But also if someone is loggedinto Facebook on their machine,
they're tracking you whereveryou go because you're logged in,
you know, on Facebook, on yourmachine.
So they can serve me first partycookies even if you're on
another site.
So Google's ad network is thebiggest, uh, Microsoft is trying
to compete with that in terms ofsearch, but also on the, on the
display side.
(11:06):
So your question of what areMicrosoft and being doing,
really the duopoly of onlineadvertising is not Google,
Microsoft, it's Google andFacebook.
From an advertiser'sperspective.
That's what really dominates theindustry.
Kyle Hamer (11:20):
Well, right.
I mean the Google, Google,Google and Facebook dominate.
You said something that's reallyinteresting here.
What does this, what does thismean for third party cookies or
third party tracking that folksmay use for their own internal
analytics or conversion pieces?
What it, like, what does thismean for, for tools, say like a
(11:42):
marketing automation tools likea Salesforce marketing cloud or
HubSpot or some of these others.
Rob Bunting (11:47):
Any of those things that are cookie based.
And one of the big keys I thinkin like you and me and some of
our clients and we've workedtogether, everybody, just so you
know, uh, so I'm kind offamiliar with some of Kyle's
clients.
Uh, multitouch attribution is,is much harder if you block
third party cookies.
So if you think about if someonesees an ad and then makes a
purchase, a lot of times peoplego through more than one step or
(12:11):
more than one visit to a websiteto make a purchase.
So someone might do a search,they might, and then they might
sign up for a newsletter later.
They might see a banner.
So trying to attribute theactual sale to the source gets a
lot harder without third partycookies.
Uh, one of the things, forexample, banner or display
(12:32):
advertisers, uh, I mentionedyour example earlier of going to
espn.com and see the banner fromfanatics to purchase chiefs
items.
So if, if, if you do away withthird party cookies and you
click on that ad, uh, fanaticsmight have a harder time
tracking that to the sourcewithout a third party cookie.
(12:54):
They wouldn't know which adcampaign was the actual ad that
you saw.
So if you see a banner, don'tclick on it, but then visit
fanatics two days later andpurchase, that's called a view
through conversion instead of aclick through conversion because
you viewed the banner.
Well that type of attribution ofdisplay campaigns is gone
without third party cookies ormultitouch attribution.
(13:19):
Particularly for business tobusiness advertisers, people may
come to a website three or fourtimes before they actually
convert, and if you wipe outthird party cookies, it's much
harder to track, okay, we knowwe got to lead well, which ad
did it come from?
And this affects advertisers ofall sizes.
Um, and one co one entity thatwe haven't really talked about
(13:41):
yet is publishers.
So think about a newspaper.
Uh, newspapers mostly rely onthird party ad networks to sell
their advertising.
They can sell some of itthemselves.
Uh, and a lot of journalistshave come out and said, this is
really tough.
So, uh, Laura Bassett, who's ajournalist who's written for a
(14:03):
number of top magazines, GQ andothers, she put out a tweet the
day this was announced and itsaid a quote, Google eliminated
third party cookies isdevastating for news publishers
ad revenue at a time when thejournalism business model is
already in crisis.
When Firefox did it in Germany,publisher revenue dropped 15%.
This can't happen.
(14:24):
Hashtag saved journalism.
And that may sound melodramaticand kind of, you know, alarmist,
but I think it's absolutelyright.
I think, uh, news newspublishers and other, um,
journalists, bloggers, a lot oftheir money comes from ad
networks.
So, uh, this, this could bereally devastating because
(14:45):
advertisers are going to be lesslikely to want to advertise on
these sites if they can't trackthe, the performance of those
campaigns
Kyle Hamer (14:54):
specifically the view through you're talking
through, right?
Cause if I convert on that side,I can track that.
Sure.
Click click the conversion tomultitouch attribution.
Rob Bunting (15:04):
Because again, if you, again, using the fanatics
example, if a ESPN, you considerthat a publisher, you could
consider that new site, right or, or[inaudible] dot com or
cincinnati.com USA today,[inaudible] dot com if it makes
it harder for fanatics to figureout what ad led to a sale, they
might be less likely if at thatnews, let's say, uh, the local
(15:28):
newspaper, it's showing ads fromCritio and Critio is using a lot
of third party cookies andtherefore, or if you're doing a
retargeting campaign throughCritio, let's say, so let's say
you went to fin addicts and youlooked at chief stuff but you
didn't buy and then you see abanner the next day from
fanatics, it says now 50% offCheech merchandise, click here.
(15:51):
And if you were to click and gothrough, that's what we call a
remarketing or retargetingbanner.
Uh, if Critio can't cookie youanymore, they can't serve you
that banner.
And it kind of wipes out thatkind of campaign.
So, and that's why the day thiscame out a couple of weeks ago,
Critio, which is one of theleading a book ad networks that
(16:12):
competes with Google in twodays, their stock drops 24% and
hit a 52 week low because a,this announcement that Google is
dropping third party cookiesupport.
So it could really devastate alot of other competing ad
networks and the companies thatuse them.
And it forces a lot of usmarketers and advertisers to
(16:33):
spend more on Google if thereare, or Facebook, the few big ad
networks that are left.
A lot of the smaller ad networksjust, well our are in trouble in
that case
Kyle Hamer (16:46):
from a, I'm a site owner, I'm a person who, you
know, uses cookies to deploy onmy site.
What does this impact, whatimpact does this have for me?
Technically it will call theconfused, just supposedly stop
or do we know
Rob Bunting (17:00):
if first party cookies are not effective?
First party cookies are stillokay.
It's the third party cookiesthat Google is talking about
doing away with first partycookies will still exist.
Kyle Hamer (17:13):
Sounds like, sounds like it's, um, it's something
that we've dealt with or alreadykind of dealing with, with, with
the Safari browser and Mozillabrowsers specifically.
Rob Bunting (17:25):
Mmm, yes.
But again, cause curl curlworldwide, I think Chrome has
like 60 or 70% market share.
So yes, absolutely.
This has affected Safari and uh,because it's in Safari and
Firefox.
So yes, some of these appnetworks in particular, for
example, critical or havealready been struggling and this
(17:47):
kind of accelerates that.
So yes, isn't a totally newthing.
I'm looking at, you know,looking at like a five-year
stock chart for Critio.
And you know, about three yearsago Critio was$54 a share.
Now it's 14.
So I give you an idea of how inan era when internet advertising
is continuing to increasesignificantly trivial, one of
(18:09):
the biggest app networks, stockhas plummeted or gone down.
It was like 75% in the lastthree years.
Um, so yeah, it just kind ofexacerbates the trend in that
regard.
Kyle Hamer (18:26):
It'd be, it'd be really interesting to see, see
what shakes out and how Googledefines first party versus third
party.
Because I think too, um, tomany, many companies, business
to business or otherwise this,this appears to have far
reaching impact, it'll have farreaching impact into account
based marketing.
This will have far reachingimpact into a conversion
(18:50):
attribution, mixed marketing,mixed modeling.
This will have, um, impact into,you know, speed, delete or
conversions to your point ofretargeting, you know, leaving,
leaving leads.
There are people that are morelikely to close, you know, out
hanging in the balance or youknow, if you take a monopolistic
(19:10):
or a, you know, uh, antitrustperspective, it's Google doing
exactly what Microsoft did whenthey put office on every PC that
came out.
Right?
Like, it's, it's probablywell-intended, but there are far
reaching consequences that wedon't fully appreciate yet.
Rob Bunting (19:30):
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
Um, uh, I, uh, there was agentleman from India named show
moron Dasgupta.
He works for a D and I F whichis a data analytics platform
based in Mumbai, India.
And he mentioned that, um, theydo one thing about putting this
on a bit, let me give a quotehere.
(19:52):
However, I'm sure that Googledoesn't want to force the death,
the cookies too quickly,thereby, and thereby attract
antitrust attention end quote.
So just like you were sayingthere, uh, by kind of, they're
trying to kind of do this insuch a way that doesn't really
bring in a lot of, uh, antitrust, uh, concerns.
(20:13):
Cause obviously there's alreadytalk about breaking up Google
and Facebook right out there inthe, in the, this is world.
So this would kind of, theydon't want to kind of overdo it.
Um, and I have a quote here fromMatt Kaiser of a Liveintent for
Google, Google and YouTube isone of the majority of their
money comes from, and firstparty cookies from YouTube will
be unaffected by this change andclose.
(20:35):
So it's exactly right when youthink about doing a retargeting
campaign in Google, which I've,I run several, um, that's done
via putting people in anaudience and Google analytics
and a Google conserve its adsall over its network.
So, but they're not worriedabout it so much because they
mostly rely on first partycookies.
It's their competitors thatreally rely on third party
(20:58):
cookies.
I guess as far as marketers,we're just gonna have to figure
out new technologies that arenot particularly invasive that
help help to get around this.
We kind of have to adapt.
So it'll be interesting to seewhat technologies come out other
than fingerprinting packetsniffing.
Like I talked about.
Kyle Hamer (21:18):
Well in the, in the, you know, the evolution of a
cookie cookie wasn't around 22years ago when the internet and
things you were doing forstarted.
That was an evolution of kind ofweb 2.0 right.
Which is this new, let's createa more personalized experience.
Maybe we're headed into webthree.
Dot.
Oh
Rob Bunting (21:34):
yeah.
Yeah.
I again, I think things willdefinitely evolve not to sound,
uh, you know, maybe the skyisn't falling as badly as it is
for some of these adenoids andpublishers, but I think they
have to act fairly quickly tosurvive.
And as that quote from thejournalist mentioned that,
again, we've seen it, newspapersaround the country are going out
(21:55):
of business.
A print circulation is obviouslydown for both newspapers and
magazines.
And a lot of new sites are, theydon't simply make as much money,
uh, from digital advertising asthey did in the old print world.
Uh, and anything that lessenstheir revenue at this time is
really, really critical.
A lot of newspapers around thecountry that haven't gone out of
(22:17):
business heavily skeleton staffs, uh, they've really cut back
their newsrooms, uh, and theprivate knows, you know, new low
in it, particularly localwebsites, local news sites, uh,
is, is tough.
So yeah, as marketers and uh,companies that are, you know,
agencies like myself that aretrying to help companies of all
(22:38):
sizes, not just large ones,figure out how to spend our ad
dollars wisely and generatesales.
Uh, this is gonna really forceus to develop some new
techniques that maybe we don'thave that, uh, yet.
And it'll be curious to see howit shakes out.
Be interesting.
Kyle Hamer (22:57):
It will be very curious to see how it shakes
out.
Um, some of the stuff, some ofthe stuff that you've mentioned,
you know, if you, if you spendany time thinking about
fingerprinting or deep packetlistening, those types of things
, um, if you spend more thanfive minutes thinking about it
and you think about the, notonly the, the, um, the business
implications and creativityrequired in order to pull that
(23:17):
stuff off, but the, um, thepotential security threat and
maybe additional, uh, you know,we, we live in an environment
where terrorism is moved maybefrom what you see in the streets
to what's happening on your PCwith more and more, uh, viruses
being launched at the, I mean, Imet a company the other day
(23:41):
where the gentleman is doingcybersecurity for floors in the
unit, right?
So you start to think about deeppacket listening and I can track
this stuff all the way down tothe machines.
Bob's handheld or you know, thesorting machine inside the
factory.
It starts to become reallyinteresting.
(24:03):
Um, what the next evolution of,of security, privacy and
protection is going to meanbeyond just advertisers, right?
It's not, not just advertisers.
They're going to have to thinkabout this.
It's, it's going to have bigimplications across, I would
say, the next 20 years of, of'eminternet behavior.
Rob Bunting (24:25):
Yeah.
As we've discussed this, thisdoesn't just affect advertisers
and marketers like us and ourclients.
This affects journalists.
This affects site owners.
As you said, there's privacyconcerns and there's been so
many articles that could thirdparty cookies are bad.
And now it's like, well, what'sthe alternative?
Guess what?
In some cases, from a privacystandpoint, the alternative
(24:47):
might be worse.
Again, you can at least adjustthe browser, setting your cookie
settings in your browser.
You can't, uh, affect yourfingerprint studies or your data
packet settings.
So it will be, um, just kind ofunintended consequences of this
push for privacy.
Uh, if anything it, and gettingkind of, particularly since
(25:07):
we're talking about Google andthat was the Genesis of this
conversation was Google'sannouncement.
You know, they're blocking thirdparty cookies and grow.
It helps them consolidate theirpower.
I mean, they have 70% marketshare on desktop worldwide and
41% on mobile.
Uh, that's a, that's huge powerright there.
Kyle Hamer (25:29):
It's quite a bit of leverage and it does create
market opportunity for otherpeople.
So I mean, it'd be, it'd beinteresting, you know, as one is
one power grows, usually there'sa opportunity for healthy
competition being introduced inthis.
We'll find out.
Hopefully.
Yeah.
Rob Bunting (25:44):
And again, I mentioned AOL earlier.
You know, when I got into theindustry, AOL, half the people
in America were on AOL that wereonline.
So, uh, the.com when I wasworking for, we spent most of
our money on all, of course, AOLis no longer with us as
technology evolved, people andcompanies that were dominant
players in 1998, some of whomare no longer with us.
(26:05):
And who knows where Google willbe five or 10 or 15 years ago
now from now as dominant asGoogle and Facebook are right
now.
Um, it's not an ironcladguarantee.
There could be as dominant
Kyle Hamer (26:17):
in the future.
Well, I mean it, uh, that's boththe beauty of, of American
capitalism and one of theterrifying things about American
capitalism.
You always got to compete andyou always got to find a new way
to reinvent yourself.
Otherwise you could go the wayof the Dodo, like AOL time
Warner and some of those othercompanies that didn't, didn't
(26:38):
make the internet transitionvery well.
Exactly.
Well, Rob, I want to, I want tothank you for being a guest
today and providing some, someinsight.
I think the takeaways for me arestay vigilant and keep watching.
Look for creative in new waysand who knows, maybe the, the
answer to the third party couldbe doing away with new way.
(27:07):
Great.
Val, thanks for having me.
I appreciate it.
Alright.
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