How Cookie Deprecation Will Shape 2024 Political Advertising

In the second half of this year, Google will begin to fully deprecate third-party cookies across Chrome just as the presidential election begins in earnest. The intersection of these two seismic events will have a profound impact on political advertising. The full deprecation of third-party cookies will eliminate marketers’ ability to use the currency to target voters across the Google ecosystem, which will have two primary effects on the allocation of political budgets, according to interviews with executives in the publishing, advertising technology and political marketing industries. This year, digital political advertising spend in the U.S. is expected to top $3.5 billion, according to projections from Insider Intelligence. The shift will exacerbate the fragmentation challenges of the open web, as the pool of addressable voters will be reduced to those who have volunteered their first-party data to publishers. And it will push political marketers to allocate more spend to other channels, particularly connected television (CTV), that similarly target signed-in users but on a household basis and in a lean-back environment. “When those political marketers come around with a million dollars to spend in the next 30 days, publishers need to have an answer for how they’re going to find those people,” said advertising technology consultant Scott Messer. The upcoming presidential election will mark the first major advertising moment to occur in a web without third-party cookies. The strategies marketers adopt and the results they see will inform not just future political advertising tactics, but also the broader playbook for targeted advertising in a post-cookie world. “It’s a test run for the future,” Messer added. Publishers need online video and addressable inventory Political advertising on the web falls largely into one of two buckets: fundraising and persuasion, according to Kevin Fisher, general manager of political at The Trade Desk. Fundraising efforts typically use last-click attribution methods, meaning they rely less on third-party cookies. Persuasion, however, has historically made more use of the disappearing currency, although cookie usage reached its peak before the 2020 election, according to Messer. When working to sway voters, political advertisers prefer video, as the medium offers more creative capacity to communicate a message, according to Mike Schneider, a partner at the political advertising firm Bully Pulpit International. When those political marketers come around with a million dollars to spend in the next 30 days, publishers need to have an answer for how they’re going to find those people. Scott Messer, advertising technology consultant So in a world without third-party cookies, the majority of open web political advertising will turn to addressable digital video. This will preference publishers that have built up their pool of addressable audience, typically through single sign-on tools like registration walls. It will also pose an advantage to publishers with substantial stores of premium video, coinciding with a broader trend that has shaped the media ecosystem for the last few years. Publishers without these offerings will find themselves unable to capitalize on the bulk of political ad spend, according to Justin Wohl, chief revenue officer Snopes.com and Salon. And political marketers unprepared for these tectonic shifts in the privacy landscape will find their marketing spend increasingly ineffective as signal loss renders their targeting techniques inaccurate. One silver lining of this vast contraction? One-to-one methods of targeting, particularly those involving email, will be more precise than third-party cookies, according to Fisher, meaning prepared publishers will see their yields and CPMs increase. “In the third-party cookie world, we all have something like seven cookies associated with us, versus one email or phone number,” Fisher said. “Addressable inventory might be smaller, but it will be more accurate.” More spend migrates to CTV The same factors influencing political marketers’ spend on the open web—a contraction of addressable inventory and a preference for video—will combine with a third factor, the viewing experience of CTV, to push more spend to the growing medium. Political advertising on CTV is projected to reach $1.56 billion this year, or 24% of all digital political marketing, according to Insider Intelligence director of forecasting Peter Newman—an increase of 506.3% compared to 2020. This is because the medium offers political marketers access to signed-in users watching unskippable ads, but with the additional perk that the consumption occurs on a household basis. Every election is a local election, and CTV allows marketers to target users on a (nearly) one-to-one basis with a granularity that goes beyond zip code. CTV still has a smaller pool of addressable inventory than the web, and the lack of established DSPs in the space can pose fragmentation challenges of its own, according to Schneider. But the enhanced creative capabilities of the channel, combined with the engaged viewing experience of television consumption, make grappling with those challenges worthwhile. “We want to buy on channels and shows that people pay attention to most intensely,” Schneider said. “Publishers that can offer that will be in demand.” Google Chrome’s Cookie Phase-Out: What You Need to Know

Politics

The Third-Party Candidate: How Cookie Deprecation Will Shape Political Advertising in 2024

Signal loss in Chrome is pushing marketers toward prepared publishers and different channels

Mark Stenberg

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Mark Stenberg