• by Todd Wasserman , April 14, 2022

Google plans to start blocking cookies in Chrome by the end of 2023 -- and three recent reports show marketers aren’t ready for this shift.

Nielsen’s 2022 Annual Marketing report, entitled “The Era of Alignment,” shows that just 26% of global marketers are fully confident in their audience data. The report is based on a survey of 2,000 global marketers between December 2021 and January 2022.

A majority (64%) of respondents said that social media is the most effective paid channel. Spending on social media increased 53% among global marketers.

Still, marketers’ confidence in measuring ROI of the full funnel is just 54%. While nearly half of marketers plan to increase their spending on podcasts, their confidence is measuring the ROI of that investment is 44%

The rise of connected TV (CTV) also presents challenges. Though 51% of marketers expect to increase their CTV spending in the coming year, 36% of marketers say that data access, identity resolution and deriving actionable insights from data is extremely difficult.

Jamie Moldafsky, chief marketing and communications officer for Nielsen, said that with the upcoming depreciation of third-party cookies, “it’s understandable to see marketers prioritizing personalization and aligning their brand with causes their customers care about.”

The Nielsen study comes as Forrester Consulting and SheerID released a report that shows 99% of marketers are actively responding to data depreciation, the result of browser and operating system restrictions and privacy laws.

And Twilio has released a report based on a survey of 3,450 business leaders and 4,500 consumers that found 55% of companies are not fully prepared for a cookie-less world. Forty-two percent of respondents predict that the demise of the cookie will lead to lower ROI on their marketing spend.

Google announced in January 2020 that it would overhaul Chrome by removing cookies within two years. This January, Google announced a new plan called Topics that aims to get rid of cookies. Chrome currently claims about 65% of the global browser market.

To prepare for the upcoming demise of Chrome’s cookies, here are a few suggestions culled from various online sources:

• Consider moving campaigns to audio and connected TV because IP addresses are still live there.

• Review proposals in Google’s Privacy Sandbox to submit feedback to make them better.

• Capture a portion of your website traffic via email forms and subscriptions. That lets them collect a first-party hub for targeting.

• Invest in ways to harvest first-party data. That’s what Unilever and Procter and Gamble are doing.