The End of the Third Party Cookie Leads to the rise of...Second-party Data?

Article: https://digiday.com/media/publishers-planning-end-third-party-cookie/

First, let me take a step back and do my best to summarize the revolution that's currently happening in the industry: Cookies lead to the collection and sale of what have thus-far been known as 3rd-party data segments. In short, each user ID is associated with an individual cookie, and then gets categorized by a data broker (often labelled as a "third party" as they aren't directly involved in the buying or selling of ad space in a given online transaction) into segments - or buckets of users - that are conceptually useful to marketers, such as: "Expecting Moms" or "Video Game Enthusiasts". I'm pretty sure that the thing that chrome will soon be doing away with is this notion of a cookie and/or UserID...

What does this mean for the industry? 

The industry-wide methodology used thus far to segment and target specific ad campaigns to supposedly "relevant" consumers is beginning to crumble, and alternatives that are less consumer privacy-intrusive must be found! The above article discusses the direction that the industry currently seems to be leaning in terms of a potential solution - and they describe it as "second-party data". I believe they do this because first-party data is typically known as data owned by the advertiser (ie: data collected when customers authenticate into the Nike website, and/or buy Nike products either offline or online). The notion of second-party data, as distinct from third-party data, comes from the fact that it's still collected, controlled - and ultimately owned - by one of the parties to every ad-based transaction: The publisher, aka, the "seller" (with the brand/advertiser being the "buyer", of ad space).

So, to summarize the above article: Again, the so-called "Death of the cookie" (which Mike posted about on 1/25) is likened to the ultimate demise of the use of third-party data; but the industry is rapidly coming together to try and create solutions (ie: offering similar functionality for targeting specific ads to users that are likely to deem them "relevant") for that which third-party data currently covers. One solution is to use contextual-based data collected by publishers, and potentially create a similar (yet clearly differently-derived) dataset that advertisers can use to target ads toward specific consumers. The article discusses the need for a standard for "contextual mapping" so that there can be a common language, so to speak (and standard of quality, of course), by which the data from different publishers can be compared and - if desired - combined for use in a single campaign.

So, what does this mean for each of the players?
In short: I don't really know - I'm not sure if anyone does; but here are some initial thoughts:

1. Since data derived from contextual mapping is content-based, consumers likely won't perceive it quite as sinister as user-based tracking. 
2. Advertisers likely have mixed feelings about this, as change is hard - and they're likely going to have to adjust they way they've been targeting potential consumers thus far. Will it be more or less effective? I'd argue: This all depends on the quality and origin of the 3rd party dataset(s) that a given advertiser has been using - which vary significantly in quality (accuracy), based on how they're derived. For more on the challenges of data quality, I'd recommend reading this article (it's about the IAB Data Transparency Label, but provides pretty good context as to why this initiative came about).
3. As for Publishers: This seems to be an exciting opportunity for individual publishers to add additional value to marketers - value which was previously captured by third-party data brokers providers, and which can be developed into another crucial revenue stream and/or justification of premium pricing for a given publisher's inventory. It will, of course, be challenging to properly collect and structure publisher data (and this is part of why the industry is coming together to create some standards); but in my experience working on the publisher side of things (ie: the "sell side"), publishers are want for reasons to remain relevant in the present-day commoditization of supply. *Perhaps I'll write more about what I mean by this in a future post; however - I'm signing off, for now!