Digitas Nadeau On Finding A Role For Cookies And IDs Beet.TV [Video]

AMENIA, N.Y. — The digital ad industry has been preparing for a cookieless future. While Google’s surprise decision not to deprecate cookies in its Chrome browser may reduce the urgency of the move, it won’t necessarily change the fundamental trajectory.

“The cookie itself is just one tool as a means to reach those actual audiences and the true identity of someone,” Liane Nadeau, executive vice president and head of media investment at Digitas North America, said in this video interview with Beet.TV contributor Rob Williams at the Beet Retreat Berkshires 2024.

While cookies are an “inaccurate identifier for reaching audiences”, the threat of their deprecation had helpfully “forced us to get to a place where we’re ready for a cookieless future”, Nadeau says.

The marketing industry’s march toward alternative identity solutions was not kick-started by the Chrome question alone. GDPR and CCPA also ignited Apple’s move to change mobile device identifiers.

The industry has since been moving to alternative forms of identifying audiences, including by gathering first-party …