Why a Cookieless Coffee?

Anyone who has been following the business and tech news for a while will know that it has been “a bit turbulent” in the market. Consumers seem to lose more and more trust in large organizations because they are overloaded with advertisements, have the feeling they are being tapped and on top of that see a continuous stream of news reports about data abuse and data leaks. As a result, consumers have been actively seeking protection for some time now, which is especially evident in the increase in the use of Adblockers. In addition, consumer expectations of organizations regarding privacy and security are now sky-high. Governments have not been (and are not) sitting still and have already implemented various privacy laws in addition to frantic attempts to regulate the large tech parties.

Apple and Google lead the way

Since Tech companies exist by the grace of the user’s attention, this development has certainly not gone unnoticed either. Apple and Google have led the dance for some time now with the implementation of privacy-related changes, such as ITP and the banning of 3rd party cookies. The intentions seem very good at first, but give these parties so much power in the long run that some question marks can be raised.

Anyway. Google and Apple have made great strides with the announcement that they will no longer develop new methods of personal tracking. It is an attempt to make the Internet a nicer place for users and to ensure that advertisers are less intrusive. Only winners would you think? Yes…and no. It means that a multi-billion dollar industry will have to completely reform itself. In principle, this is fine, because the current field of tension was no longer sustainable and reform was already necessary for a long time in order to still get the attention of the consumer in any way.

A lot is at stake

However, this is not just a problem for companies active in the advertising industry alone, as these changes have a much broader effect on virtually all organizations that want to communicate with a customer. It will become increasingly difficult to build long-term customer relationships and provide personalized service. The reason for this is that the customer is more and more behind a privacy wall and will consciously choose to share his/her data with a company.

Perhaps even more important is that business-critical customer data becomes increasingly unreliable because web analytics, for example, simply do not reflect the real situation. Conversion Attribution becomes more unreliable and before you know it, as an organization you will only miss the mark with your customer more, because it is no longer clear which information is relevant or not.

What can we do to avoid the perfect storm?

A question that cannot simply be answered in a few paragraphs. One thing is certain and that is that companies will have to invest much more in long-term and more valuable relationships with and for the customer. For this it is essential that organizations, more than ever, organize themselves from the customer’s perspective, bring departments together and focus less on short-term sales value.

”All right, but what should I do?” we hear you thinking…

People who claim to have all the answers in this area may be getting a little ahead of themselves. After all, it cannot simply be solved with 1 answer or solution. This is why we (Jan & Wouter) started Cookieless.Coffee. On this platform we are working on different solutions in the form of roundtable discussions to generate a vision on this topic but also on our blog you can already see a large number of solutions.

Important to mention is that short term solutions are important but the focus must also be on long term transformations of your organization in order to get ready. The reason why this is happening is a very strong indication that organizations need to reinvent themselves and the relationship with the customer!

Take a look around at our blog or sign up for our next cookieless.coffee session!