Advertising Without Cookies

Let's talk about why the Super Bowl is the most coveted/expensive ad unit in the world. It's not because if its ability to hyper-target, dissecting and slicing audiences based on user behaviour.

It's valuable because of context.

Brands pay millions for Super Bowl ads not just because of the huge reach that they can get – those same ads could reach the same number of people on YouTube, for a fraction of the cost.

Instead, the context they're paying for is the hype, attention, and spectacle that the game attracts. When they purchase a Super Bowl ad, businesses know what they're going to be appearing next to, and how that placement is going to positively impact their brands.

That's why I think that the recent announcement that we're no longer going to be able to use cookies to track and target users with our ads is actually going to be a good thing. Instead of basing most of our digital ad targeting around who we think the audience is based on their past behaviour, we'll be forced to manage our media buys based on the website, video, podcast, or app that our ad is appearing within, or beside.

The impact will be that really high value content creators are going to be able to charge a lot more. We're already seeing that in the podcasting world where there is such a significant incentive to create high quality content that millions are now being spent to produce, or acquire, better shows.

We're also going to see more interesting and entertaining creative. Super Bowl ads are the best not just because they have the biggest budgets, but because, when they're being created, the team knows exactly how and where the ad is going to be played. Generic multi-channel media buying requires generic creative.

The cookie did a a lot of work for us, but that work was complicit in creating a more bland, less creative Internet that was probably less effective for most advertisers. Without algorithms making all of our media buying decisions, we're going to have a resurgence in the need for smart media buying, which means more jobs, and more opportunities for an advanced and overall better media environment.

If, in the interim, that means that some of the world's biggest advertisers are a bit less efficient at jamming their boring ads on millions of screens, then I'm here for it.

Written by Conner Galway, Junction Consulting