With privacy awareness on the rise, third-party cookies have been gradually phased out of the market. But without cookies to track consumer behavior data, how can marketers continue to understand consumer needs and provide a personalized experience? Fortunately, dozens of the cookieless solutions have been rolled out, helping to go down the impact of third-party cookies.
Each of the advertising channels has its own cookieless solution. What are the differences between them? Let’s find out about their technologies!
1.Meta Conversions API
Meta has launched its Conversion API solution since 2021 which helps marketers to collect accurate data. Merchants collect user’s data by pixel in the past, which allows merchants to know exactly who has entered your website, which products they have viewed or which products they have added to their shopping cart. But now if users install ad blockers or use browsers that block third-party cookies (such as: Safari, FireFox, Brave), or even use iOS, the amount of data the pixel receives will be cut down, which may seriously affect the accuracy of data collected by advertisers.
The Conversion API is a solution to solve the losing data, unlike pixels that send data from a browser-side, the Conversion API is a server-side tool, it can send events to Facebook's server through a server, it is also called “server-to-server”. The same way of server-side tool is also available for Enhanced Conversions in Google Ads, and Google Analytic 4.
💡You should know about “Server-to-server”
“Server-to-server” is a data streaming method that does not rely on cookies, but transmits data through an API on the web server side, which is not affected by the browser. Although “server-to-server” is not a panacea that can solve all the problems that will be faced in the future cookieless era, it can ensure that the data collected by the website is more complete for the subsequent optimization of advertising strategies.
If you would like to learn how to connect server-to-server to your website, please contact us and we are more than happy to discuss with you.
2.Google Enhanced Conversions
Google emphasizes that brands should focus on first-party data and integrating machine learning to marketing strategies. Like Meta's Conversions API, Enhanced Conversions is Google's solution for advertisers, which compares a brand's first-party data with Google's third-party data to fill in the missing data while ensuring user privacy.
Google says, "Enhanced conversion is a feature that improves the accuracy of your conversion measurement. It complements missing conversions by sending hashed first-party conversion data from your website to Google in a private-safe way. In fact, the principle behind "sending hashed first-party conversion data" is the same with “Server-to-server” data connection, which sends the conversion behavior of your website to Google for data comparison through the server side, so that your data can be more accurate. Enhanced conversion also has the following features. Gives you a more complete view of your customer journeys Provides you with more accurate conversion data so you know which strategies are really working Provides more data to facilitate remarketing campaigns If you want to learn more about how you can string together Enhanced Conversions for your website, contact us now! Unified ID 2.0 was launched by The Trade Desk (TTD), the world's largest advertising demand-side platform, to provide an open identity solution for the entire advertising ecosystem. It is identified through the user's email, and to protect the user's privacy, it encrypts all user information and generates a set of random codes, allowing advertisers and marketers to continue understanding their consumers, while providing a personalized advertising experience without using third-party cookies. Hundreds of companies have already become UID 2.0 partners, including publishers, SSPs and data & measurement. The reason why this solution is so well accepted by businesses is that TTD provides a fair trade solution for all advertisers outside the “walled garden” constructed by Google and Meta. It allows merchants to retain their autonomy and allows internet users to keep their privacy. UID 2.0 is not only applicable to websites, but also cross-platform to mobile apps and television networks. Recently, Disney+ has officially announced that it will cooperate with TTD in the future to launch a membership program that includes advertising, and LINE TV in Taiwan will also become one of the UID 2.0 partners, which shows that the industry is very confident of the future development of this program. You may be interested in this article 👉What Do Enterprises Do with Expired Cookies? TikTok has also launched the Events API solution. The solution is based on the same principle as the Facebook Conversions API, which also uses server-side data transfer to make advertising data more accurate. However, TikTok focuses on the high stickiness of platform users and encourages brands to produce more original content to attract the users in order to obtain more organic traffic, so even though there may be a lack of data without third-party cookies, it is still worthwhile for brands to obtain high exposure. In addition, TikTok also encourages brands to start live streams on the platform, combining their shopping ads to generate revenue. Given the current trend of TikTok ads, the platform is very suitable for getting low-cost traffic, especially in Southeast Asia, but the actual conversion benefits are yet to be tested. You may be interested in this article 👉The rise of TikTok over Generation Z Yahoo has a high usage rate in Taiwan, with over 17 million active users every month, and also has its own online shopping platform. In order to help advertisers to measure the effectiveness of advertising, Yahoo has launched the ConnectID solution, which is through the encrypted Email as a way to identify users, so that advertisers can fully grasp the customer data. Next-Gen Solution is an advertising tool for identifying and targeting consumers, it combines machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms, which can across Yahoo's search engine, mobile apps, and media platforms. The advantage of LINE advertising is that it is not affected by the browser environment therefore they don’t worry about the Cookieless. The LAP advertising platform connects various LINE services, providing advertisers with a variety of audience categories, as well as personalized ad recommendations for different levels of membership, which can be very effective in practice, but may not be suitable for brands that want to reach a large number of people at once. First-party data is essential in the cookieless era. The most direct solution is streaming the server-side tool to transfer data. We have found in many cases that 20-30% of data is lost on the browser-side, while “server-to-server” doesn’t collect accurate data immediately, so it is better to accumulate data sooner rather than later. “Server-to-server” is more like a monitor for your website, helping you to record all events that have occurred in your website, and it would become your most powerful database. The industries are now expanding into other MarTech approaches, with modular services, all to help marketers gain more insight into consumers. We can’t guarantee the effectiveness of advertising, but when everything is in place, success is not far away!3.The Trade Desk Unified ID 2.0
4.TikTok Events API
5.Yahoo ConnectID & Next-Gen Solution
6.LINE Ads Platform(LAP)
The Verdict: Server-to-server tracking solution is essential
If you have questions about “server-to-server”, or if you would like to learn more about our tech, feel free to contact us! We are more than happy to discuss the best solution with you!