Edifice Automotive | Dealer Marketing Blog

Get Ready for the End of Third-Party Cookies: Marketing with Edifice

Written by Skip Soucie | November 3, 2021

Although the cookie is crumbling, marketing campaigns with Edifice won’t be disrupted.

The end of third-party cookies draws near. In fact, Google’s phase-out of third-party cookies on its Chrome browser is expected to take effect by 2022, which means it’s time to take action if you want to make sure your online marketing campaigns don’t take a hit once this change takes place. 

By working with Edifice Automotive, your dealership will ensure that your marketing efforts can continue as they have been, even after the ban commences. We accomplish this through the continued use of our people-based, consumer-centric marketing tactics, and not relying on third-party cookies.

analyzing google data

What Are Third-Party Cookies, and Why Is Google Banning Them?

In a nutshell, cookies are tiny files that a website puts on your computer so it can track whether you’ve been there before. In this way, third-party cookies can be used by advertisers to track your activity across the internet, including frequently visited websites and products you may be interested in buying, so they can better tailor ads to suit your preferences.

Obviously, while third-party cookies are a majorly beneficial tool to marketers, they raise privacy concerns for end users. This is why many web browsers have banned their use, including Firefox and Safari. Now Google Chrome, the most widely used web browser, will soon phase out third-party cookies. 

 

How Does the Ban Affect Marketing?

Ultimately, the ban will change how advertisers collect data on prospective buyers. Marketers will no longer be able to rely on technology like retargeting to follow users around and serve them ads based on their web-browsing history. Indeed, many automotive marketers rely on retargeting to drive traffic back to a dealership’s website using tactics such as displaying dealer inventory after a user has visited a competitor’s site, identifying the competitor’s processes, and remarketing from the dealer’s vehicle display pages (VDP).

Since more than 70 percent of websites out there use third-party cookies, many marketers will have to find another way to keep tabs on customers.

As you can imagine, this is causing many agencies to frantically rethink their marketing tactics. Business owners can soon expect their existing marketing campaigns to drastically change—that is, unless, they employ marketing tactics that do not rely on third-party cookies to pinpoint online audience behavior. 

That’s precisely why Edifice customers don’t have to worry. 

 

The Edifice Difference: People-Based Marketing with No Third-Party Cookies

At Edifice, we put people first in everything we do, including our marketing. Instead of relying on third-party cookies, we leverage a more efficient people-based, consumer-centric approach. With this philosophy in mind, all of our campaigns are powered by Elevation, our innovative software platform that offers granular, real-time data of in-market shoppers and competitors. This data is supplied from our partnership with the world’s leading data providers—not third-party cookies—to target consumers based on demographics, interests, search history, and more, meaning our digital marketing tactics will be unaffected by the upcoming policy change. 

So while other automotive marketing agencies scramble to adjust their practices, campaigns that have been set up with Edifice will continue running smoothly.

 

Final Thoughts

As the ban on third-party cookies looms, dealerships need to prepare to have their marketing campaigns drastically change. While many automotive marketing agencies are struggling to figure out how to advertise in a post– third-party cookie world, Edifice is ahead of the game. Because we have never relied on third-party cookies and instead leverage proven, people-based marketing tactics, the campaigns we have implemented for our dealerships will remain unaffected and successful. 

 

Ready to turbocharge your marketing and see a guaranteed 4X ROI in sales and service gross profits?

Schedule a free 15-minute consultation, including a demo of our groundbreaking Elevation software.