Third-party cookies have been dealt blows from companies such as Google, Mozilla and Apple as they step up cookie blocking on PC and mobile browsers.
With more announcements expected in the coming months (after Google's disclosure earlier this month) that could diminish cookie volume and persistence even further, travel brands need to evaluate new methodologies for personalization and consumer insights.
Don’t let identity fall through the cracks of these discussions.
Identities are critical for consumer insights
Identity is a key or pin tied to a unique collection of insights that are unique to a person or customer.
Identities connect comprehensive online and offline data sets and signals about consumers' behaviors for an accurate understanding of current and potential customers, while respecting personal privacy and data compliance requirements.
For example, an identity key can help a travel brand to show a more relevant advertisement to someone they see online, even if they don’t directly know who they are.
Identity can help brands tie messages together across mobile, digital and in-store without accessing personally identifiable data to provide a seamless research and purchase experience for travelers.
In some industries, like programmatic advertising, vendors and publishers have lead the identity conversation as threats to third-party cookies mount.
Initiatives like DigiTrust and ID5 offer solutions that bring disparate publishers’ IDs together to create a shared ID that, in theory, could work for all of programmatic media buying, so long as everyone agrees to honor it.
However, brands are often missing from these conversations. What’s more, brands are not vocal about how they will manage beyond programmatic advertising. For example, identity is needed to personalize website content, segmentation analysis, and other marketing activities that require a persistent recognition of an individual.
Give identity its own identity
Separate from data, but similar, identity is the key indicator for knowing and recognizing an individual.
Without a current market standard, companies and industries have different methodologies for building, storing and trading identity.
Publishers use login data. In travel, identity often originates through loyalty programs. For retail, it may be through purchases.
Despite the lack of standardization, identity is the key to valuable personalization and insights, and should be treated as such.
It’s not a simple data point, but something that connects data points to a single person, which can help travel brands with pricing, loyaly offerings and upgrades, even if a traveler is not yet a known customer.
To do this, travel brands need a strategy to store, protect and transact on identity that can stand the test of time as the different data types that feed that identity ebb and flow, especially because identity is built on top of valuable first party data.
Design identity for sharing
Identity data should be rights managed transparently so business can control and manage who can and who can't use their identity data.
Brands can take the lead on their own identity strategy, and adjust their approach as they start to include more partners. This includes, brands that they share data with, or vendors that they work with to advertise to consumers.
It’s important that identity data be transparent about their source and carry explicit consumer consent, when needed. This applies not only to owned identity. Travel marketers should only adopt identity data that is rights managed, transparent, and privacy compliant.
For an identity market to thrive, the industry needs secure data in transit and at rest. All parties should disclose data usages, so brands know how their identity data is being used.
Standardized meta-data associated with identity data sources, identity data usage approvals, and identity data restrictions will also aid in helping brands and other parties adopt identity and share it while minimizing risk. At a technical level, brands must default to double encryption, even for hashed and salted identity data.
Identity still needs privacy
Building an advertising plan around identity is certainly better than third party cookies. While third party cookies are being squeezed by both tech giants and privacy laws, identity doesn’t have any vocal detractors today.
However, identity data is still subject to data collection, rights management and data privacy laws, and brands must design their strategy as such or risk heavier scrutiny.
Explicit approval or transparency from both brands and travelerson collection and usage of identity data is essential for building a compliant identity practice. In fact, it may be even more important than ever.
The truth is, third party cookies were subject to inaccuracies. Data became stale quickly, cross-device management wasn’t easy, and a lot of campaigns built purely on third party cookie data didn’t perform as well as they could have. This means many consumers often failed to notice messages were targeted, because the targeting was incorrect.
Identity is built on much more persistent data, which means that accuracy will increase. That’s excellent news for brands that want better campaign performance and more relevant personalization, but it’s also important to remember that increased accuracy can also tune consumers in to the fact that they are being targeted.
By adhering to best practices with data collection, storage and usage, brands can reap the benefits of identity while avoiding the risks.