How Dealerships Can Win With First-Party Data BY BILL PARLAMAN, CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER, STREAM COMPANIES What Is a Third-Party Cookie? Third-party cookies are created and placed on websites by someone other than the website owner (a third party). These cookies collect user data and allow marketers to develop detailed visitor profiles and create personalized advertising and retargeting campaigns. What Is the Cookiepocalypse? The "cookiepocalypse" refers to the depreciation of third-party cookies and how it affects advertising and marketing practices. As a result of new privacy laws, browsers need to change to stay compliant. Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox stopped supporting third-party cookies a few years back. Google Chrome, which owns over 64% of the market share, will stop supporting cookies by 2024. Here are three reasons why this is a problem for automotive dealers: • Data Loss: As technology and privacy policies change, more customers will opt out of your systems. Data loss reduces your ability to analyze and target user behaviors in your advertising. • Increased Customer Acquisition Costs: It increases customer acquisition costs due to reduced ad targeting and campaign measurement. Less relevant ads reduce return on investment (ROI) and force dealers to use expensive channels such as app stores, social media sites, and marketing tech platforms. • Decreased Revenue: Acquiring high-value, new customers using outdated third-party targeting and personalization is tied to revenue, and the “cookiepocalypse” puts that at risk. The Case for First-Party Data With the slow death of cookies, automotive dealers will need to increase their reliance on first-party data. First-party data is information your dealership collects about customers from online and offline sources, such as your company's website, app, CRM, social media, or surveys. You may have heard about the demise of third-party cookies, AKA "The Cookiepocalypse," on the news, in marketing blogs, or publications, but what does it mean for automotive dealers? First-party data shows a clearer picture of the consumer. However, while essential to own and activate, this data is not always handed to brands by the consumer. In most cases, dealers only have one or two sources of older first-party data: DMS and CRM data. The problem with this data is that it looks backward. What about the present and unknown predictive future in-market data? With legislation against the "sale of data," purchasing traditional audience data has already become legally messy and will no longer be possible. The Benefits of First-Party Data The beauty of first-party data is it enables dealerships to market, optimize and measure your advertising dollars. Here are just a few of the benefits of leveraging first-party data: • Lowering dependency on third-parties • Increased advertising accuracy • Owning your data and controlling it as a business asset • Increased return on ad spend (ROSA) with better targeting • Optimizing and measuring your ad campaigns • Additional insights and analytics of your website visitors and in-market retargetable audiences The Data Famine The challenge is that the world still lives in a desert of firstparty data. As you just learned, the only first-party data you own is in your DMS from CRM, and you have to ask yourself, "How accurate is this data, and do I have enough?" In reality, dealerships don't have enough first-party data to make most investments worthwhile. There is a pronounced move towards first-party data as cookiebased audiences become less accessible. Retargeting won't be as meaningful as the audiences on Facebook and Google get smaller and smaller. They will also become more expensive to reach since there will be fewer opportunities due to the deprecation of thirdparty cookies. 20 new jersey auto retailer
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