Cookies are used for many different reasons. Cookies are the reason you don’t have to put in your username and password every time you go to your favorite website to sign in. Cookies are also the reason you’d suddenly see advertisements for the products you were just taking a look at an hour ago. Once hailed as the key for modern-day behavioral marketing, cookies were the be-all and end-all when it came to online targeting.
Just as all good things come to an end, so did cookies, quite literally. Cookies come with an expiry date, and once expired, are considered null by your internet browser. This brings me to the next point. In 2015, mobile users spent 86% of their time on their phones using mobile apps rather than browsers. Also, more and more internet users are shifting away from desktops to mobile phones for their daily surfing, which further endangers cookies’ position as an effective marketing tool. Furthermore, devices are becoming more app-based than browser based. With the Internet of Things on the rise, more devices are coming with their own versions of software that work on an app-based platform, meaning cookies will not be able to be used to track down these users and curate advertisements tailored specifically for them.
All the aforementioned factors spell out one thing for cookies, an unfruitful future. Cookies are now considered null technology especially after marketing firms have started using a new method of targeted advertising. People-based marketing is now the best tool in terms of targeting technology.
People based marketing is the most targeted and powerful type of behavioral marketing. People based marketing ties all of the platforms an individual uses into one profile. This one profile is then used in order to effectively target them across all platforms and devices they use on a daily basis. This is considered much more efficient than cookie-based marketing because it cuts costs when it comes to targeting a consumer online, but also isolating the platforms they use and distributing ads In a way that circumvents ad-fatigue. While cookie-based methods sends out ads to every platform on every device a consumer uses, which accustoms the user to the advertisement and causes them to subconsciously ignore the ad once its welcome is worn out. According to Salesforce it takes 6 to 8 touch points with a consumer in order to make them a conversion-ready consumer which means that they need to see your ads across multiple platforms along their day, and people based marketing can be used to control how often and where you want these touch points to appear.