First, third and AI: 2024’s unexpected data party
With Google announcing plans to keep third-party cookies after years of pledging to scrap them, the uncertainty of a cookieless future has been put to bed - albeit temporarily.
In this episode of The CMO Show, Mark is joined by Gabbi Stubbs, APAC Strategy and Product Marketing at Adobe, and tech journalist Rodney Gedda.
We’re asking: Where did this decision come from - and what can marketers do to leverage it?
If customer data is a feast, then first party data is a home-made cake, and third-party data the store-bought snack.
There's nowhere in this analogy to easily accommodate generative artificial intelligence, but this is the landscape we're now in. Do strategies need to change as a result?
According to Gabbi Stubbs, APAC Strategy and Product Marketing at Adobe, AI is already more of an integral part of the landscape than most may realise.
“For almost every single software solution or brand execution, most of these are already operating with some level of machine learning or [...] AI.”
“What’s changed in the last 6 to 12 months is this notion of the visualisation of that. It’s been brought more into the mainstream [...] so being able to utilise ChatGPT or being able to generate text-to-images.”
Rodney Gedda, CMO at WP Quasar, thinks that the benefits of AI are yet to be fully uncovered by the mainstream.
“AI is all about data processing - and this can help marketers get more value than relying on cookies, which is what they might’ve done in the past.”
“AI can track, process, and predict behaviour and intent, getting more insights into what works for the brand, with intent to engage, intent to purchase, things like that. Applying it to first-party data is a natural progression from typical content creation to AI.”
The shift in the way we view data and privacy is already transforming customer experience. This conversation highlights the ways that CMOs are changing their strategies, and the AI tools that are being used to do so.
Tune in now!
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Credits
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The CMO Show Production Team
Producer - Pamela Obeid
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr
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Transcript:
Mark Jones:
One of the interesting things about being a CMO is that you work with a set of assumptions. There's a bunch of things that we hold to be true.
Maybe our customers will always think and feel the same way, and maybe the industry that we're working in will operate in the same way, maybe the technologies that we use will work in the same way.
Well, what happens if one of those things changes in a way that you weren't expecting?
[Music]
Hello, Mark Jones here. Welcome to The CMO Show, so great of you to join us. I'm really fascinated by the cookie conversation. Now, there are so many metaphors, so many puns, "We're going back to the bakery. We're putting the cookies back in the oven." I'm sure you've got plenty more that you can share. The bottom line is that Google decided to keep third-party cookies in Google Chrome.
Now normally on The CMO Show, we don't get too technical. But this time, given the strategic importance of understanding our customer, of using marketing technologies to really develop and implement strategies, we thought this one really needs a little bit of time and space. And so it's great that we've got two experts on the subject to join us today.
[Music]
My first guest is Gabbi Stubbs, APAC strategy and product marketing at Adobe. And also joining us is Rodney Gedda, founder and CMO at WPQuasar. Thank you both for joining us.
Gabbi Stubbs:
Thanks for having us.
Rodney Gedda:
Thank you, Mark. Pleasure to be here.
Mark Jones:
Gabbi, let's just go to you and get straight into it. Can you give us a quick recap? What's going on with Google? It was supposed to be a cookie-less future, and now it's a future with cookies.
Gabbi Stubbs:
In short, Google did announce that they were not deprecating cookies or third-party cookies, but that's only partly true right? Effectively, what we've seen over the last few years is somewhere between them announcing that deprecation or the plan to deprecate cookies in Chrome very specifically four years ago. Their strategy now seems to be really tightly wedged between privacy advocacy and continuing to be able to support the ad industry, within the context of both performance and monetisation.
So we listened to the announcement that we heard, there are changes very much moving here to be able to elevate the consumer choice here. And instead of deprecating, they're introducing an experience in there that allows users themselves to be able to make informed choices and have that applied across their experience. So I think for the most part, this notion of leaning into consumer choice is absolutely the right one. It will absolutely have a change in terms of how marketers might respond.
But if we think about it from a step back and then moving forward into it, we know that consumers are in a space where absolutely they want transparency and control, so that lean into consumers choice, as I said, is a great one. But at the same time, the underlying outcome that actually happens here is a transference of responsibility for privacy to be solved by the user instead of Google right? And so I think the reality is when we start to get into this, we start to think about the possibility that we might actually move into a space that looks a lot more like an eventual opt-in only scenario.
So I think if you're a marketer, you probably need to sit back for a minute and think about potentially how this plays out in terms of the response that our consumers might make to that, I think, explicit choice. For me, after all of these years going through this, I think the net effect is likely to be exactly the same, in that third-party cookies are likely to be killed off eventually anyway. So, it doesn't really look any different to what we've seen beforehand in terms of that trajectory.
Mark Jones:
To borrow from Monty Python, "Not dead yet." Rodney, technical challenges, this was not an easy thing to fix though from the beginning. It sparked a whole conversation in the industry around first-party data, but meanwhile, they were working on all of this technology in the back-end to change things, and maybe it just was a bit more complex than anticipated. What do you reckon?
Rodney Gedda:
Yeah, that's true. So if you look at the evolution of Google as a company and Chrome, let's not forget that advertising is still its core business, so it has to tread carefully when it has to make these type of changes, let alone a sweeping change that could impact a large ecosystem and network of advertisers. In fact, if you look at the history of Chrome, it was born out of a need for Google to have more control over its web applications and customer portals. Because back then people actually used Internet Explorer and Firefox, and to a lesser extent, Safari, so Google couldn't resign itself to continuously wrangling with third-party browsers that had no control over.
So fast-forward to today, and Chrome's got about two thirds of the browser market, and it's the main channel for ads across desktop and mobile. So, instead of scrapping third-party cookies altogether, which has been spoken about, it's introduced new Privacy Sandbox API. So technically, while it's certainly possible for Google to introduce more controls for the user. For marketers, that means they're going to have to think more about how they rely on third-party data.
And it's likely to be an evolution from, "Let's collect everything and dissect it later" to more of a, "What data can I collect that is useful to me?", and doing more homework about collecting data that can be used for more better prequalification and better understanding of the market, including AIs are the flavour of the month at the moment. But, there are plenty of ways to target your target market, rather than just relying on a lot of data, which is the case with third-party cookies.
Mark Jones:
Gabbi, the interesting thing from an Adobe perspective is that, if we go back in time. And I'm loving the history, by the way, Rodney's talking about old browsers. If we go back in time, this really for Adobe and the whole digital ecosystem sparked huge interest in first-party data when Google made this news. First-party data was always there, but just take us back in time a little bit.
What did that change do to the whole sector and the way we thought about privacy, about how to be customer-centric? It had a lasting impact, right?
Gabbi Stubbs:
Yeah, look it did. It meant fundamentally, the premise of what advertising targeting and retargeting was built on was effectively that third-party cookie, so the way that marketers were actually operating fundamentally was turned on its head.
And so one of the key pivots that I think was pretty critical in that space, regardless of when we knew cookies existed, was that focus back onto the customer. And that, certainly for Adobe, is where the pivot came from in terms of the first-party relationship, really trying to make sure that those experiences were elevated. And in order to do that, you needed a direct relationship with those customers. And the most effective way to be able to do that, and then in turn to be able to deliver significantly more meaningful experiences and advertising, was to be able to run with a base that was first-party data.
On that basis, clearly the effectiveness of that and the stability of that, the durability of that as an ID, is something that increasingly makes sure that all of those executions and outcomes are significantly more stable into the future, and effective into the future as well. So if you think about it slightly differently, that space of thinking about customer first is absolutely relationship-based.
And you need that in order to have that relationship, you need to have a first-party asset that connects you directly to that consumer.
Mark Jones:
I imagine the listeners are going, all right, so we've got third party staying for a little while until it's finally kicked off the digital planet, and we'll have these first-party strategies around. What does this mean? What do I do? What's the best way forward?
Gabbi Stubbs:
I think one of the things that we also forget, Mark, is that at the end of the day we are thinking sometimes about these things as actually mutually exclusive, when the reality is, is that you're going to need both of these things to be able to move forward, but they might look slightly different to what they currently do as a third-party cookie. So think about, for example, resetting your foundation and that strategy we just spoke about around your first-party data. That's the really powerful piece to be able to leverage from to start with. And then start thinking about how you can integrate with those second- and third-party options to be able to enrich and then scale that as a propensity moving forward to go beyond your own capabilities. We need to start thinking about that. So there are a couple of really practical things that I think marketers should probably think about.
First of all, think about and assess what the actual impact is, regardless of the type of data. And then I think you need to reassess then what your cookie-led marketing budgets are actually delivering to, to try and get a level of understanding about what the right path is.
Then, of course, you need to start moving into that space that looks like unlocking different data assets, and certainly those first-party data assets that sit across those disparate data sources, but really thinking about it in the context of how that's delivering to a key understanding of those customers and building those relationships that I said. And then in turn, that is the mechanism that's going to drive your marketing performance.
I don't think you should think of yourself as an island in this, and not necessarily to lose all those data as mutually exclusive in terms of the use. So the way that we move forward in terms of how we start being able to not just build off that data foundation to execute but also to scale, is really thinking about privacy-centric data collaborations and workflows that are going to start to augment that first-party data with trusted data partners. So it's not an easy path.
58% of marketers are not actually prepared for what would technically be a cookie-less environment anyway. So, some of those first steps are really critical just to be able to get out of the starting box, I think.
Rodney Gedda:
I just want to second a few things that Gabbi says. She made some good points about how a lot of marketers might've had dependence on data. Like third-party data, they might be relying too much on it and might be missing the forest for the tree, so to speak.
But if you think about what marketers can do at this point, if they're faced with a potential paradigm shift, this is okay to go back and say, "Do you need to update your target demographic? Are you exploiting the best channels? Is existing information put to good use?" Which was one of Gabbi's points. So they're all prudent questions CMOs are going to ask themselves in light of changes. And in addition, are they suffering from analysis paralysis, are they doing a lot of analysis on bad data? Things like that.
So I just want to make that point about, there are things that you can go back to if you're faced with a change in how your capability might be impacted if you're not going to be getting as much third-party data as what you have in the past.
Mark Jones:
If we think about Google and some of the macro trends that are going on, there's this really interesting thing where, there's an AI for that. Do you remember when there was an app for that? Now there's an AI for that. Instead of going at a very simplistic level going to the Google search bar, we're going to everything else. There's a bit of an issue there, is there not? Let's talk about the rise of AI and the competitive pressures that are going on here.
Gabbi Stubbs:
I think for the most part, when we are dealing with customer data management or any data management, the scale of what needs to be delivered for the most part is so intense that for almost every single software solution or brand execution, most of those are already operating with some level of machine learning or potentially AI. So what's changed in the last 6 to 12 months is this notion of the visualisation of that. It's been brought into mainstream from that perspective.
A lot of that is what we probably term as playgrounds, so being able to utilise a ChatGPT or being able to generate text-to-images, are for the most part very whimsical, I guess, in many sense.
The reality is for the most part, a lot of these systems are already operating with AI. So what is the outcome is the step that comes before the AI. And then the step before that is clearly this space around the data foundation.
The concern here is if we go straight into playing with the tools, we forget about the functionality of AI or the outcome that we need to get to. For me, when I think about this, one of the greatest concerns is also that without us having gotten this piece right necessarily around data as a foundation for most brands, we're kind of looking at a foundation that whatever you start to build, you end up amplifying with AI. So you're now in the position where you can have exponentially exceptionally-fantastic data, and therefore experiences for your customers, or you're literally compounding a dumpster fire. This focus on AI at the moment is probably not in the right spot if we don't have our house in order at the very first step.
And I think, as I said, also this notion of what we are thinking about at the moment, or seeing at the moment, is this playground scenario. What will make the step change? I think we'll start to see is actually those general improvements in productivity. That's how we can have teams be significantly more impactful in terms of understanding or knowing what they're working with in terms of that knowledge base, but also being able to execute things in a more automated fashion or discovery, being in a scenario that is significantly easier. Those are the things that I think start to change for us in this near term, but they're not the things that we're necessarily focused on at the moment.
Rodney Gedda:
You know I think an interesting trend for us to consider when we talk about AI and marketing is how many brands are now saying they've actually got humans working in the company, and they point to a human angle because ‘everyone else is AI’ to cut through the noise of AI. But seriously, AI is here, it's here to stay and it is a paradigm shift in collating information and generating information that is relevant to you.
AI is all about data processing and this can help marketers get more value than relying on cookies which they might've done in the past. Given the context, AI can track, process and predict behaviour and intent, getting more insights into what works for the brand, with intent to engage, intent to purchase, things like that, rather than just basing on historical data that they might've had in the past. Applying it to first-party data is a natural progression from typical content creation which marketers are used to now, with AI.
The tricky part is finding that balance between the nuggets that AI can provide in the data that is available, and how brands act on those nuggets and go-to-market with the real value that AI provides, which is shifting through noise and visualising intent and more personalised customer experiences.
Mark Jones:
Really, really good point. Because it really sharpens the focus on the quality of the data that you've got, to Gabbi's point, and from your perspective, Rodney, thinking about all of the different sources of data that we now have access to, there's another piece around this which is thinking through the set of expectations that are now being created. The challenge for CMOs is going to be: How do we create expectations that meet that? Because regardless of the sector you're in, we're all in the same world and we're going to want instant solutions to my question, we are going to want it to look and feel fast, and so on. It's shaping the environment in which CMOs are playing.
Gabbi, I wonder, from a customer experience point of view, your thoughts about the best way to approach that dynamic?
Gabbi Stubbs:
It’s a great question, Mark. This is where I was leaning into in terms of that productivity conversation. As I said, I think the divert is the focus right here. At the moment, we're thinking about the outcome instead of, to Rodney's point, thinking about what it's actually going to deliver you. So, think about generating those insights in natural language scenarios. Think about being able to discover audiences. And so a marketer should think about the things that is going to help them do more efficiently, and then enabling or opening up the space for their teams to be significantly more creative or generate deliberately more and more impactful ideas around their campaigning or their execution.
So if you're a marketer, we've just given you everything that talks to data and the need for you to be able to either automate or clean or whatever, process that data. But if you focus on those core elements of insights and audience discovery and execution or activation, and then this piece that actually talks to content delivery, they're your first focus areas. Think it through the lens of actually delivering greater efficiency and effectiveness as opposed to ‘it's so overwhelming’. And then you come back to the natural solutions that AI can deliver you to achieve those elements.
I think one of the most difficult and underrated jobs in the world at the moment is the CMO. You need to be a data scientist, you need to be a great campaign executionist, you need to be able to do all those fabulous things in terms of customer experience delivery, but if your end focus is wholly on that customer experience, you can work back through those elements and then understand how AI is going to deliver that. Those things don't fundamentally change, it's just how you're going to execute those and make them significantly more effective and you're more productive to elevate creativity in that, is this more meaningful.
Mark Jones:
Such an important point around the leadership role of the CMO and having to think strategically about how all of these different elements connect.
Rodney, on the data privacy side, and as we start to wrap this out, going back to Gabbi's comment that the focus was going to ultimately shift to more control for users when they think about what information they share. Interestingly, and I know that you've seen this over time, we've been giving up a lot of privacy for a long time. We've got a whole generation of people coming through who've traded it away and they've been taught to trade it away, particularly through social media.
And so, we're going to have this interesting dynamic where we're going to be asked, "Do you want to give this information away?" "Well, I thought that's what we all did?"
Rodney Gedda:
Yeah, it is interesting. As the old saying goes, "If the product is free, then you are the product." So, there's no doubt that people have resigned, as a certain extent, some of their privacy and personal information to global brands that can track.
As CMOs, we need to focus on customer experiences and the relevance and timeliness of information to get people to interact with our brand. We can offer something that's free. "The people can be the product", as the old saying goes. But we can also offer something that's relevant to their role, relevant to their business, something that is unique in market.
Better experiences and relevant information never tire, do they? It's up to marketers to be that Swiss Army Knife that have access to all the data that we've spoken about through cookies, through to AI, through to customer experiences and what people actually want.
The challenge being if people are going to be more concerned about which personal information they give up or if they're going to have more power to be able to block how they are tracked over the internet, then it's incumbent upon us to give away the lazy ways of being able to target people and be more creative and use data better than what we have in the past.
Gabbi Stubbs:
I think it's also really important, picking up on Rodney's point, don't forget the value exchange in here. People will be willing to be able to offer you something in return for something that is highly beneficial, whether that is a great customer experience or whatever it might be.
So, you're very much in a space where as you offer more in that exchange for the data, you're building that trust, you're building up the opportunity for you to deliver more meaningful experiences, and that gets rewarded in the end. I think that's really critical to be able to understand. And it's probably one of the core components that we keep missing in customer-experience delivery, but one of the things that will drive success in leveraging that first-party data and certainly within a privacy context into that future, if you're a CMO.
Mark Jones:
It's a great reminder that another one of the things CMOs are juggling is the value exchange, and how does your business operating model intersect with that, and how some of these shifts are going to potentially upset that model. It's a really interesting dynamic.
Just in closing, what next? What do you think CMOs should be thinking about next?
Gabbi Stubbs:
Make sure you can assess what you currently have, determine what is going to be most effective for you. Which means really having a good look at what your standardised KPIs or measurement systems are across your business, and therefore understanding what is going to be most effective starting to build out that first-party data strategy.
And as Rodney pointed out, with that focus on what you need to do at the end state, is it for insight delivery, for audience execution, or campaign delivery, et cetera? And then as you start to build out that first-party data set, be really cognizant throughout that of where your gaps are. You still are going to be in a scenario where you need to be able to enrich your audiences, to make them more meaningful in terms of what you deliver. You need to be able to scale that, to be able to find opportunities to acquire your customers within that.
So, think about how you extend your first-party data assets through privacy-centric collaboration, picking those very deliberate partners to be able to move forward with. And sometimes that will mean second or third-party data within that context.
They're the places to start with. And of course, I would probably give a plug in there obviously, Mark, for a CDP to be able to deliver that, being the person who looks after the CDP in our network.
Mark Jones:
Indeed. Not only that, there's a lot of agency people out there cheering as well. It's good for a lot of people, I think, this current situation.
Mark Jones:
Rodney, your closing thoughts?
Rodney Gedda:
Yeah, sure so in thinking about how to pre-qualify our target market better if third party options are going to be more limited in future. A side effect of that is to be more impetus to be creative on how we capture our first-party data.
In our case, we're building one of the world's largest database of WordPress sites without a single cookie. We've done a lot of research in our market, we know it well. And then we can develop automation and tooling, including, dare I say, AI, to enrich that data and use it for both inbound and outbound activities.
Think about pre-qualification, think about getting a step forward in targeting your known market, and the results will come. Be proactive, essentially, that's probably the closing message I have. We've been accustomed to getting so much data, we can often forget what our core value proposition is and what our core market is. So, go after it.
Mark Jones:
Rodney, are you reminding us that we need to remember that we look after humans as our customers? Is that where this is landings?
Rodney Gedda:
Definitely is.
Gabbi Stubbs:
It's also suggesting to have your own strategy, not a strategy from a tech company potentially, Mark, if we go back to the start of the conversation.
Mark Jones:
Right. It's true, it's true, you really do have to own it.
Gabbi and Rodney, thank you so much for being my guests today. You are both fabulous humans and fabulous technologists. You've brought some really great insights to what is a fascinating conversation and an evolving trend in the world in which we live. Thank you for your time, and we'll see you again soon.
Gabbi Stubbs:
Thanks so much, Mark.
Rodney Gedda:
Thank you, Mark.
[Music]
Mark Jones:
When I reflect on the big picture of this conversation, which I hope you enjoyed, is that this assumption that we think technology companies will continue to move in the same direction that they've announced, we can't always hold that to be true. The great reminder here is that this customer-centric strategy that we've been talking about for such a long time, thinking about customer experience, thinking about how do we really understand the heartbeat of our customers, can never be far from our core mission.
These different intersecting technologies will always shift and move, and we're going to have to understand them and to be able to contextualise them in the context of our values at the organisation and where we see ourselves going. And some of these tools and techniques are going to need to change, and quite often they're going to need to change quickly.
It was really fascinating to hear how Gabbi and Rodney could help us understand what's going on and offer some clear, practical strategies. I hope you got a lot out of it. I really enjoyed the conversation.
That's it for us today on The CMO Show. Thank you for joining us, until next time.