Line of Sight Marketing: Use of Advertising Cookies

In the last post on Line of Sight Marketing, the focus was on capturing website visitors contact information for an email marketing program. In this post, we explore how advertising buys that are intended to prospect for new customers can employ line of sight marketing without requiring the user to register or login.

One of the key tools in an advertiser’s toolbox is the “cookie.” Cookies are a common component of most website tracking and online advertising targeting systems and are defined as: “A message given to a Web browser by a Web server. The browser stores the message in a text file. The message is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.”

The primary use of Cookies in marketing has been to determine the value of a particular advertising buy using a methodology called, “closed loop marketing.” Closed loop marketing assigns a cookie to each user who sees or clicks an ad; the cookie is then used to determine if that user later purchases at the website. Closed loop marketing math works like this:

Ad Spend / Purchases (or leads) = Cost per Order

With a cost per order (or other ‘cost per’ metric), the marketer can rank their different buys and make decisions about how to improve their program.

So how does this all matter to Line of Sight Marketing? Because there is a debate about how long a cookie should be active. The reason is that many marketers know there is a limited time that one person remembers an advertisement and they want to limit the amount of credit that ad receives by using an expiration date. For example, if a person sees an ad 95 days ago, a 30-day cookie would not give credit to that advertisement if the user later visits the site and makes a purchase.

The problem arises that by expiring the cookie, the marketer has lost sight of someone whom they have already started a relationship with. There is no question that there is an expiring value associated with a particular media placement and advertisement’s results. However, when the cookie expires, it also expires the intelligence that you have about that person’s preferences and response to a particular message. Because most systems assign only one cookie for media tracking and creative intelligence, when the cookie expires, so does the intelligence.

To maximize your line of sight, cookies for creative intelligence should be separate from media and never expire so that the marketer will gather an ever-growing set of intelligence to inform and improve results with.

Evergreen Creative Cookies Use Case: Bob is browsing the web in July and notices an offer for a new Widget A from Company X. He looks at the ad with interest but does not actually click or visit the website. He later forgets about the ad. The tracking system sets a cookie on Bob’s computer to indicate he saw an ad for the widget. In December, Bob is browsing the web and again notices an ad from Company X. What ad should Company X show Bob now? The potential scenarios are:

• Scenario A: With an expiring cookie, Company X does not know that Bob already saw an ad for Widget A in July. The system shows the same ad Bob saw in July and the result is the same — no click, no visit.
• Scenario B: With an evergreen (non-expiring) cookie, Company X knows that Bob saw an ad in July and did not click. The system instead shows Bob an ad with Widget A offering a 10% discount or a different ad with Widget B featured. With the evergreen cookie, the marketer employs a more intelligent creative program that allows them to better maximize their advertising budget.

There is a nascent set of solutions out there that are starting to separate the media and creative cookies so that marketers can maximize their line of sight. Two to keep an eye on are ChoiceStream RealRelevance® Advertising and Atlas Engagement Mapping.

If you would like additional information on this topic or a free needs assessment, please contact a Thrivepoint Advisor.

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