Third-party cookies are dead! Browsers such as Firefox and Safari, followed by Google’s Chrome, are already putting privacy first and block tracking by default. The consequence? “Publishers and marketers need to drop third-party-tracking and focus on developing relationships with their customers. Contextual advertising is the new cookie”, claims martech expert Michael Sturm, CEO of TMSe.

This trend may be surprising for some. To date, digital advertising makes up more than half of all ad spending and growing by more than 100%. Big companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon are the greatest profit-takers. Together they control about 80% of non-search advertising, as well as 50% of advertising in the open internet. All made possible by cookies.

However, the tracking cookie starts to crumble. Evolving privacy laws, stricter requirements and the rise in customers’ privacy demands, cookies will only be a short term investment. The future of the global ads market is about privacy first. Earlier this year, Google announced that they will drop third party cookies and assured that they will refrain from developing an alternate tracking system. “With the end of third party cookies, publishers and marketers should work closer together and find new, innovative strategies for using data – and one reliable strategy is contextual advertising”, says Stian Remaad, CEO of Adnuntius.

Contextual advertising uses keywords, category information and other information on a page, and therefore makes sure that ads fit to the environment they appear in. Instead of getting bombarded with business ads wen reading a travel guide, customers will see hotel recommendations for their next holiday. Adnuntius implemented support also for cookieless advertising from the early start. The company’s system “Adnuntius Marketplace” offers buyers, publishers and ad networks an effective alternative to programmatic advertising.

Relying on context may seem strange at first sight, but it comes with several advantages. “Contextual targeting can produce great results, and is also one of those things that publishers are great at since they already have editorial content as a source of information”, explains Stian Remaad. Additionally, by waiving cookies, businesses put their customers’ need – privacy – first and make sure that their ads appear in an environment that fits the brand and that is relevant for their target group.