Your 2024 New Year’s Identity Resolutions
by Frank Campanella, on December 19, 2023
As we venture into 2024, the digital marketing landscape continues to evolve. The long-promised demise of third-party cookies is becoming a reality with Google’s latest Chrome feature release set for January 4th. At the same time, the regulatory environment around privacy and user consent will continue to heat up with 12 states (and counting) that have already passed legislation. Whether you’re a marketer or a digital publisher, an effective audience strategy in 2024 needs to incorporate the following:
Develop your Identity Mapping Plan
Are you leveraging a vendor or building it yourself, incorporating your own rules and heuristics? How will this integrate with the rest of your tech stack and into various activation platforms?
Leverage Multiple Sources of Data Supply
Very few marketers and publishers can just rely on their 1st party data alone. Putting all your data eggs in one basket is risky in a landscape devoid of third-party cookies. Diversification is key. Organizations need to harness a variety of data sources beyond their own limited 1st party footprints.
Account For Scalability and Flexibility
Scalability is another cornerstone of effective identity mapping. As your organization grows, so too should your ability to handle an increasing volume and complexity of data.
Look to a mix of Deterministic, Contextual, and Probabilistic Data
There is no silver bullet in the post-cookie world. An effective identity mapping strategy should balance deterministic, contextual, and probabilistic data. Deterministic data offers certainty but is limited in scope. Contextual data provides insights into user behaviors and environments, and probabilistic data, though less precise, helps identify broader trends. Blending these data types is key to creating a nuanced understanding of your audience.
Ensure Compliance and Protection of PII
In this new era, protecting Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and adherence to privacy standards is non-negotiable. Any identity mapping strategy must include robust measures for data security and privacy. This includes compliance with data protection regulations, data encryption, and strict access controls.
Select the Right Data Suppliers
Without third-party cookies, the importance of choosing the right data suppliers cannot be overstated. Beyond price, your list of criteria should include quality, compliance, and interoperability with your tech stack and systems. Like any supply chain, you should be careful not to be over-reliant on just one source.
Executing Your Identity Strategy With Narrative
Narrative allows you to evaluate and acquire data from multiple suppliers with access to over 70 data providers through a single query that ensures data standardization across all sources:
Efficiency in Data Management: Narrative's deep AI integration and automation ensures data from different suppliers is immediately usable, dramatically reducing the time and resources spent on data processing & cleaning.
Cross-Industry and platform compatibility: The platform's data standardization technology makes data universally applicable across different identifiers and platforms, enhancing its utility for diverse business needs.
Enhanced Data Collaboration: By making data interoperable, Narrative’s platform facilitates smoother collaboration between departments and with external partners.
Security and compliance: Narrative maintains SOC2-compliant security measures and allows companies to enforce their data governance rules.
Variety: With one query, access a rich tapestry of data, including identity data, demographics, location, and more, from over 70 suppliers.
Scale: Narrative's platform is designed for scalability, handling petabytes of data and offering custom solutions tailored to your organization's size and needs.
Conclusion
It is time for both marketers and media companies to develop actionable audience strategies that can function and flourish in this challenging environment. Narrative's platform emerges as a robust solution in this regard, offering access to a wide range of data providers and ensuring that the data is standardized and interoperable, saving time and resources. This agnostic approach aligns with not only the evolving digital marketing landscape in 2024 but also well beyond.
