#60 - The Cookie Crumbles

For years, the internet let you follow people. Tag a visitor on your site, chase them across Facebook and Google, and close the sale later. That playbook is dying, and most business owners haven't noticed yet.

Third-party cookies, the tracking tags that made retargeting possible, are getting phased out. Not all at once. Not evenly. Depending on where your customers live and what phones they use, some of you are already feeling it. Others won't for another year.

In this episode, Ken breaks down what third-party cookies actually are, why attribution is quietly falling apart, and why your cost per acquisition is climbing even if your strategy hasn't changed. No fear-mongering. Just the watchtower view of what's already happening and what it means for your marketing dollars.
If your ad performance has gotten weird lately and you can't quite explain why, this one's for you.

Transcript

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The rented web is collapsing and the playbook is dramatically changing when it comes to internet marketing on this episode of Over the Bull. So what do I mean by the rented web is collapsing? That just sounds kind of weird and nebulous, doesn't it? But in all actuality, if you've done paid advertising, uh likely you have been using the rented web. Matter of fact, I can bet you 99.9% of you are using the rented web. So this would affect you the same as if you were renting a house and then your rent, your lease is coming due, and they go, We're not going to renew your lease. You're going to have to find some other place to live. That's not a small decision. Now, when it comes to the rented web, it is probably more so for your business dramatic than that. That's not hyperbole. You know it over the bull, we don't sell hyperbole because honestly, there's plenty of that out there. If you want to uh buy or get data based on hyperbole, just go to your spam email or just listen to your favorite AI vendor peddling the next thing that they think is uh going to just solve all your problems. Guys, there's no magic boxes. Okay, so let's get back to this. So basically, if you think about an old documentary, uh, you know, you would see them where they would periodically sedate an animal, then they tag that animal, and then they follow that animal. And then they can learn a lot of things about that animal. And so it's a technique that's been very valuable historically in preservation and things like that. So when it comes to the internet, there's kind of the same thing going on. So when you advertise, what advertisers, or maybe even yourself, would do is you put a little tag on your website. Now that tag is just like tagging that animal. And so when someone visits you and then they go other places, that tag follows that person around. Now, you didn't own the tag, right? You're just borrowing that tag from a paid advertiser. And so what happens is the paid advertiser has the data, they follow the person around, they keep showing your ads, and then someone makes a purchase. Now, when that happened, obviously you didn't own the data, you're borrowing the data. But then also uh search engines, paid advertising, Google, all these guys, what they would do is be able to follow that customer journey all the way through to the end. And then they could optimize their processes based upon that customer journey. So basically, they're able to track and they're able to do it. And you've been tracked, and I've been tracked, and um your customers have been tracked if you've been using these data points. So let's break down here. So, cookies, you know, you get into these terms and they all just seem so uh out there, you know, because you hear a term and you equate it to something else, and you're like, wow, that really sounds complicated. Okay, cookies is not complicated. Um, ad networks like Google or Facebook put that little invisible tracking tag like that would go off that animal on websites. You visit the site and they tag you. You leave and go other places, they see that same tag and they recognize you, they follow you across the internet wherever they can, and they show you ads later. Now that's a third-party cooking. It's surveillance that the advertisers love because what happens is you can optimize that journey, and as you optimize the journey, then the cost per phone call, the cost per someone filling out of form, the cost for someone making a purchase, it goes down because you've captured an interested person. Now, the problem is you've rented that data. So here's what's happening now. Those cookies are being phased out. Now think about that. The tracking tag and being able to follow the animal in the documentary, that equivalent is being phased out. So think about it. If you couldn't track an animal anymore, what all data would you lose? Where it drinks, where it goes, where it sleeps, uh, what it does on a daily basis, did it go west, did it go east? You know, you'll you might be able to get bits and pieces through different types of surveillance, but you're going to lose a lot of data in that process. So these cookies are being phased out on the internet. Now, Safari killed them years ago, and Firefox killed them. Chrome is doing it in waves right now. Now it's not all at once. So some advertisers are already bleeding while others haven't felt it yet. Okay, now this trend is clear. Okay, it's not a this may happen, you know, it's not selling sensationalism. This is reality. So let's think about this for a second. Let's say that in one geographic location, a lot of people, more people, use Chrome and Google-based devices. And in other places, they're using more Apple-based devices. That means that the tracking, tagging the animal in one location is more effective, while if you tag it in another location, it's getting less effective. So if your business serves a demographic that are primarily using Apple devices or Firefox, and they're using a different percentage, say it's not as saturated as, say, you know, a Google device that's still using tagging, you can imagine while one location may not be as effective as another location. And so if an advertiser you've always used have used third-party data heavily in getting conversions, you can imagine the firestorm that's getting ready to happen as things progress. So just as I told you, these landing pages for uh Google Ads people who built these landing pages and they're effective still. And I said, be careful, that's dying. Okay, now what we're seeing is we're seeing third-party data dying. That's part of that equation. Now, let's think about this. Let's flip the script here just for a second. Now, what I want to do is I want to talk to you about those people that are paying to come to your paying to bring them to your website. Now, roughly, uh Google across the board. Now, this doesn't mean every business, okay? So some businesses do better than other businesses. But in general, 85 to 95% of the people who visit your website right here, right now, leave without buying or engaging. Now, a good ad campaign, we we do exceed 10 to 15 percent in some cases. But most of the time, that 5 to 10 percent range is kind of where you live. So think about that. You pay for 100 people to come to your website. Of those hundred people that come to your website, you actually get a meaningful action out of somewhere between, I don't know, let's just call it five to fifteen percent. What happens to the other people you paid for? They never engaged. Okay, now that data that happened in the background, uh, you never capture, you never do anything with, you never know who they are, you don't know how they existed. Now, a third-party data, believe it or not, that's still a problem, but now it's worse of a problem. So here's the question: if you're paying for those people to come to your website, why aren't you trying to capture more of those people? And you know, you're probably thinking, well, yeah, well, of course I want to capture more of them, but you've already given me the statistics and you've already said I'm only going to capture five to fifteen percent. Well, and maybe more, you know, let's let's be honest here. That number can go higher in in different markets. So what am I trying to say here? Okay, now let's skip over to something we call the funnel. Now, I don't know if you make tea and you put sugar in tea, or if you work on a car and you put a funnel in the car so you don't get oil all over the engine. But we kind of work from the same mentality as a funnel. Now, at Integrist, we believe in a funnel and we overlap with something called an ecosystem. But basically there's a funnel, meaning the people who are based on their interest of um wanting your services, goods, whatever, that they may enter the funnel at the very top, not ready to make a purchase, or they may be ready to make the purchase at the bottom of the funnel. Now, we know certain things about people and their interest or whatever. And then also, people are not robots. So they may bounce on your website, just not like the way your website looks. They may just be price shopping, they may fill in the blanks. People are not like robots, so they can make their decision arbitrarily. But needless to say, you bleed that much. So you're you're only getting a small percentage. Okay, so the idea was that what you would do is you'd focus on the five, optimize the five, get the five to seven, get the seven to ten, you know, whatever, because there's a huge difference between converting a five percent and four percent. And everything that you miss can decrease that more and more. Okay, so let's think about this. Now we have something called first person data. Okay, so we had our third person data. Third person means it's somebody else that you're renting data from, your paid advertisers. First person data is data that you own. So what you want to do is you want to capture more of that audience. And the reason that you want to is because now you own it. Now you can send them direct emails. You own the relationship, which also makes your business more valuable, by the way, if you're ready to resell it or ready to sell it. And so the final changes. Okay, so what do I mean by that? Now, what you want to do is you want to try to capture, and you've always really wanted to do this, it's just people ignored it because the the the uh third-party cook cookie thing was just a thing people relied on, advertisers and individuals. Uh, but this has always been important. But the idea is you want to offer people things that are added value when they visit your website, when you're paying that traffic for them to see your business online, for them to engage with your company so you can collect that information. Now, if you don't do it, here's what's going to happen. Just like that tag, okay, so when we're talking about that that animal that's being tracked in, you know, in the wild, you can see it in spots. Okay. Now, the tools that you use to see that animal, because now you don't have a tracker actually on the animal. Now what you're seeing is you see it every uh, I don't know, every every once in a blue moon. And the data becomes more sketchy. You know, the the animal leaves point A, but by the time it gets to point B and seen again, the animal is sick. Well, what happened between A and B? See, before uh Facebook, Google, all these other guys could tell you, well, they stopped here and they did that. But you see, people want their privacy, and I don't think that's a bad thing. So now you need to own your relationships. You should have been doing this some time ago, but you know, it's easy to keep riding the um, you know, the train to the to the last stop. Well, we're we're getting at the last stop. Safari and Firefox have already pulled the trigger. Um, Google's already started phasing it out, and so what you're going to see is the cost per acquisition is going to go up, and you used to pay a much smaller fee for that phone call or that form fill. Now you're going to spend more money for that. And so the idea is now you need to nurture your clients and the people that visit your website much more closely. That's first-person data. So collecting information and then creating an effective experience for individuals who visit your website is more relevant than ever. So this flips the funnel, doesn't it? This means that people who have different levels of engagement, you want to engage them at those different level points, offer them something added value, collect that information, and then give them added um benefits in order to engage with your company. Don't that actually sound like how you'd want to do business anyway? I mean, let's face it, how creepy was it for you to go around on the internet and then see ads you visited for one place and then you see them pop up in other places? I mean, or you you hear it, you know, when you go somewhere and you're like, how did they know that? That's the thing that's dying. Now, again, I think it's a good thing. Um, from a marketing perspective, obviously it's not quite as good, but from a practical and from a human standpoint, it's good to have your privacy, in my opinion. So this is the challenge. So, what are you doing on your website right now to capture higher funnel people? People who may be exploring options, people who aren't ready to make a purchase, people who have found you for various reasons. Okay, so we're saying, okay, that's great, that sounds good, but is it really impacting anything realistically? Okay, here's the fun part. I ran a test this week, and the data is pretty staggering. So we service certain businesses in different areas. And in some areas, I mean, it's like hitting, it's like T ball. I mean, you you can't miss it. And then other areas you're like, wow, this cost per acquisition. Now remember, acquisition is just a fancy word to say a meaningful action. Um, it's really pricey down here. What's the difference between the two areas? Now, I can tell you that I wanted to test this out because we have some areas that uh the cost per acquisition, cost per phone call, whatever, is a lot lower than others. And I go, I wonder if the demographic is more affluent, more Apple-oriented people, and I also wonder what their adoption of certain things are. And here's the thing, guys. In markets where most of the devices are Apple-based, the cost per acquisition is significantly higher. In places where they're still using uh third-party tagging, it's much lower. So, what does this mean for you? What this means for you is you need to get on your first party data game, something that isn't very um appealing for some of us, where we're trying to collect information that can help us grow our company. This is how you're going to survive. You need to concentrate on first-person data. This means you need to give easier opt-ins. You need to give people a reason to engage with your company. Is your marketing company doing this right here, right now? Are you doing it right here, right now? Are you testing to find out what people want more than others? Are you doing the keyword research to find out what topics people are looking for and how you can answer that easier? Are you doing any of that? Okay. So that's the take-home. Third-party data, these cookies, borrowing data, renting on the internet, is essentially in the death thralls, and it's changing so much. Now, in areas where it's still effective, guess what? It's going to work for a little while. Just like I've been telling you, the guy who runs your Google Ads and is running them to those low-ranking splash pages, it's still working. It will work for a while, and it's going to work in some demographics better than others. And in other cases, it's not going to do it. Okay. So hopefully this helps you guys out. And I really hope that it makes you think a little bit more about how important it is to get those email signups. I mean, a lot of times, you know, well, why in the world don't people to sign up for an email? I'm just doing this. I don't really care. You need to start caring because this is here. It's real, and our data is 100% backing up that it's real. So if your cost per acquisition is going up, which means you get less clicks, which means you get less leads, and you're having to increase your budget, this is one of those signals verifiable that is 100% happening today. Until next time, this is Ken with Over to Bull.