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Has Google’s Announcement Left You Wondering What You Need to Do Next?

  • 3 min read

Last week, Google once again caused quite a stir in the advertising ecosystem. What they announced was nothing new—but a strong reminder that cookie deprecation is real, and with change coming, the time to take action is now. Let’s be very clear—the end of the third-party cookie is going to have a major effect on the industry and while it’s an exciting time to reinvent the industry, there is no silver bullet. 

At LiveRamp, we’re focused on connecting marketer first-, second-, and third-party data to authenticated publisher inventory. This will be a subset of the new Internet, but it will be the most premium subset—the gold standard for ad buying comparable to what you can get in the walled gardens. Further, authentications provide publishers a chance to deepen their relationships with consumers and also strengthen their relationships with marketers. LiveRamp has been championing these very ideas for years and has been working with our customers to help them prepare. During that time, we have seen the industry respond and recognise the need to move away from the third-party cookie with the ecosystem rallying around Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS) and authenticated approaches.

One of the questions asked most during our recent Clubhouse conversations and Ask Me Anything webinar is – “what should I start doing today to get ahead of the curve and start seeing results?” Here are our recommendations:

For Marketers

  • If you use DV360 for LiveRamp onboarded audience-based buys, run a LiveRamp Identity-enabled PMP via one of our IDL-enabled exchanges, including Index Exchange, Magnite, OpenX, and PubMatic, in the next 30 days. You can do this with your existing contracts, and our integrations are ready to go. 
    • Best practice: start with a minimum budget of $100,000, a minimum time frame of 4-8 weeks, and an audience size of 2 million or more, if possible. 
  • Use the next 90 days to migrate all of your LiveRamp onboarded audience-based DV360 campaigns to another DSP or buy through DV360 on LiveRamp Identity-enabled PMPs.

For Publishers

  • Deploy ATS within 60 days. Mimic the authenticated audience approach YouTube and Google Search deploy; even if you only have 5% or less of your traffic authenticated, get ATS turned on. Testing has shown that publishers with low levels of authentication benefit enormously. 
  • Use the next 90 days to A/B test authentication strategies and look to increase rates to 30%. You’ll then be prepared for the holiday season.

For Platforms

  • Enable bidding using LiveRamp Authenticated Identity Infrastructure or be live on Sidecar within 60 days. DSPs should use this opportunity to fully embrace audience-based strategies, lean into ATS, and make audience-based buying as easy as possible. Authenticated solutions will be an essential tier of a platform’s offering as the post-cookie ‘stack’ of solutions emerges. 

In addition to the replay of the Ask Me Anything webinar held this week, you can read more about our take on this week’s news via these recent blogs:

You’re not in this alone—reach out to [email protected], and we will help you begin the transition to a post-cookie world today.