Speaking during the Cookie Conundrum: A Recipe for Success virtual event hosted by theCube and sponsored by Quantcast, Xaxis MD Xiao Lin said: “If the cookieless future was a Tik Tok dance, we’d be dancing right now and at least until next year.” Lin was discussing his agency’s approach to supporting clients as they experience a learning curve in anticipation of third party cookies disappearing from online advertising in 2022.

He said brands and agencies should follow six steps to prepare for a cookieless future: find out what’s working today for brand campaigns and learn from it; look at geo targeting strategies; test and learn from contextual advertising; work with publishers who can curate similar audiences using their first party data; first party data will matter more than ever; and use informed prospecting to understand the right mix.

Also speaking at the event was News Corp SVP and global head of programmatic advertising, Christopher Guenther who hailed the deprecation of third-party cookies as a “long overdue reset” and an opportunity for the industry to “fix bad practices”. Quantcast CTO Peter Day echoed similar sentiments: “In these times of massive disruption, there's always an opportunity to make things better.” Guenther continued: “It’s going to be quite a ride. That’s an understatement. As publishers we have to be collectively disciplined with what solutions we test out and what we eventually adopt.”

Guenther, who is also an IAB board member, was joined by speakers from advertising technology company Quantcast, and the founder of marketing education organisation U of Digital. With a registered audience of thousands of industry professionals, the event focused on solutions for brands, agencies, and publishers adapting to the anticipated deprecation of third-party cookies in online advertising and was live streamed in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.

Founder of U of Digital, Shiv Gupta pointed out the flaw in publishers planning to rely on paywalls or logged in audiences to replace cookies.

“Only 5% of internet traffic is authenticated,” he said, before going on to emphasise the importance of transparency when it comes to organisations seeking permission to user consumer data: “We have an existential crisis about identify in this industry. Now, more than ever, people want truth. They want trust.”

In a one-on-one discussion with event host John Furrier, Quantcast CEO Konrad Feldman described the role the company plays in the industry: “Our job at Quantcast as champions of the free and open internet is to help direct money effectively to publishers across the open internet and give advertisers a reliable, repeatable way of accessing the audiences that they care about in the environments they care about and delivering advertising results.”

Quantcast VP of product, Somer Simpson, touched on the alarmed response from many to the recent announcement from Google that it would not support alternative identifiers in the absence of third-party cookies.

“I’ve gone from being a product manager to a therapist because there’s such an emotional response,” she said. “[Brands are saying] It’s not just about delivering ads. It’s about how do I control frequency? How do I measure success? “[Publishers are saying] We’re taking back control and we’re going to stop the data leakage. We’re going to get the value back for our inventory.

“Both [points of view] are good, but if [the relationship between publishers and brands isn’t] managed it’s going to be like ships passing in the night,” Simpson said.

The full speaker line up included:

• John Furrier, founder, co-CEO, and editor-in-chief of SiliconANGLE Media (Host)
• Konrad Feldman, Quantcast founder and CEO and IAB board member
• Christopher Guenther, SVP, global head of programmatic at News Corp and IAB board member
• Xiao Lin, managing director of Xaxis
• Shiv Gupta, founder, U of Digital
• Peter Day, Quantcast CTO
• Somer Simpson, Quantcast VP of product
• Shruti Koparkar, Quantcast head of product marketing.

The Summit can be viewed here: https://events.cube365.net/quantcast/cookieconundrum-apac