Based on 35 in-depth interviews with Australian brands, publishers, agencies and the tech supply chain – representing billions of dollars in marketing spend – Mi3’s ‘Post-privacy, post-cookies’ report presents the most comprehensive cross-industry analysis yet on how every part of the marketing, media and tech industries are preparing to operate in a post-privacy environment, and where the unknown could land. There's some convergence, much divergence but no consensus. Call it an early industry roadmap navigating the biggest upheaval to digital marketing and media for two decades. It's big.    

What you need to know:

• How brands including ANZ, CommBank, Adore Beauty, Little Birdie, Menulog and Westpac are racing for new privacy-compliant ways to market to customers as platform and regulatory changes bite.
• Report covers all of Australia’s major publishers, their strategies.
• All major alternative IDs covered.
• Plus marketing consultancies, tech provider and agency insights.
• Independent Mi3 report, based on 35-plus interviews, supported by MiQ and Resolution Digital.
• Get ahead of the curve. Download the report here.

Marketers make seismic shifts

Brands are already feeling the impacts of platform changes. None are truly ready for what’s coming next, but smart marketers are preparing for a post-privacy, post-cookie environment:

• Adore Beauty is driving consent, personalisation and crucially, sales uplift through a loyalty play, though says Apple’s changes are hurting.
• Menulog is also feeling Apple’s impact, with costs rising and measurement much harder. “You lose sight of what a large portion of what your audience is doing,” warns CMO Simon Cheng.
• CommBank is building a huge aggregated loyalty platform – or walled garden – in a bid to defend against global tech incursions and gain consent from customers to bring more brands into its app.
• ANZ is also banking on loyalty via Cashrewards to achieve similar ends.
• Westpac is working through consent permissions and re-permissions as new regulations bite.
• E-comm shopping platform Little Birdie is trying to take on Amazon – by giving retailers and brands back first party data.
• Taronga Zoo is monetising content and generating first party data by steering away from walled garden video platforms.

Alt IDs versus publisher walled gardens

The report details all major alternative ID players, as the ad supply chain attempts to build cookie replacements.

But Australia’s largest publishers are reluctant to lose audience data to the open web as they did in the early days of programmatic. Many are building walled gardens of their own, aiming for more direct deals with brands using logged-in audience data and clean room data matching.

The report covers: Seven, Nine, 10 ViacomCBS, News Corp, The Guardian, Yahoo and Gumtree’s first party strategies.

Google and Facebook win?

Brands fear a patchwork of publisher walled gardens creates further fragmentation – and some warn audience and PII (Personal Identifiable Information) leakage could become a critical issue if hashed emails become the go-to identifier.

The upshot is that marketers may take the least risk option, and hand over more money to Facebook and Google.

“If we are wanting to market at scale using addressable audiences, it’s playing in the hands of the walled gardens, and it’s really difficult to see a vision outside of that,” says Philip Pollock, COO at Resolution Digital.

But Damien Healy, Apac Operations Officer at MiQ, urges brands to understand alternatives now: “There will not be a single replacement for cookies. If people are expecting a like-for-like future, they should get over that and move on. You have to use different kinds of data and different kinds of approaches, and there will be many.”

Alongside commercial supporters MiQ and Resolution Digital, the 67-page report features expert insights from Adore Beauty, ANZ, Blis, Cashrewards, CommBank, Civic Data, Gumtree, GroupM, Karlsgate, Little Birdie, Liveramp, Matterkind, Media.Monks, Menulog, Narrative, News Corp, Nine Entertainment, Pega Systems, Pubmatic, Seven West Media, Taronga Zoo, The Guardian, The Lumery, The Trade Desk, Venntifact, 10 ViacomCBS, X15 Ventures, Westpac, Yahoo, plus Anna Johnston, Peter Leonard and Phil Eligio.

Get ahead of the curve. Download the report here.