SUMMER 2021

120 THE DISTRIBUTOR’S

120 THE DISTRIBUTOR’S LINK JOE DYSART DEATH BY COOKIE: FASTENER DISTRIBUTORS NEED FOR A NEW WAY TO ADVERTISE ON THE WEB IN 2022 from page 44 That third-party cookie – owned by the ad company – begins tracking your movements on the Web the moment it’s embedded in your browser. Moreover, the same ad tech company has the same agreement with many of the dozens -- or perhaps even hundreds of Web sites -- you also visit in any given day. And with each Web site you visit featuring advertising from that same ad tech company, another third-party tracking cookie is placed in your Google Chrome Browser, tracking you all the way. Each new cookie beams back data to the ad tech company about your Web movements and preferences. And each cookie enables the ad tech company to develop an ever-deepening interest profile on you, which enables it to target ads to you on other Web sites featuring its technology – based on your preferences. For more than a quarter of a century, tracking consumers using third-party cookies has been an extremely precise way to target ads to consumers – and also anger more than a few consumers who felt such tracking violated their privacy and often made them feel creeped-out. That consumer resentment has reached a crescendo. “Invisible and gratuitous data collection leaves users unable to exercise their rights and protect their privacy. We need substantive, enforceable regulation to stop this exploitation of our data,” says Gus Hosein, executive director, Privacy International (www. privacyinternational.org). Google, which also runs one of the Web’s most powerful and widely used ad tech platforms, has apparently decided that its not worth further inflaming that consumer anger over third-party cookies – even if that means phasing-out one of ad technology’s most effective ad personalization technologies. The Upshot? Beginning in 2022, fastener distributors that have relied on ad tech companies powered by third-party ad tech companies will need to use alternate systems to get their brand in front of audiences using Google Chrome. “It’s time to kick third-party data for good and focus on developing relationships with your customers,” says Owen EMAIL MARKETING IS EXPECTED TO EXPERIENCE A SPIKE IN 2022 AS THIRD-PARTY COOKIES FADE AWAY. SOME COMPANIES ARE CONSIDERING DEVICE FINGERPRINTING TO TRACK CURRENT AND POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS ACROSS THE WEB. Ray, senior content marketing manager, Invoca (www.invoca. com/), a digital marketing services provider. Here are a few solutions for fastener distributors recommended by Web advertising experts: ¤ Email Marketing Lists: While Web advertising fads come-and-go, email marketing keeps on chugging along, offering marketers some of the best ROI for marketers’ efforts, year after year. Marketers build email lists by soliciting email addresses in exchange for providing riveting email newsletters, informative white papers, early notice on new goods and services, discounts and coupons and the like. Expect increasing numbers of fastener distributors to double-down on this tried-and-true marketing tool in coming months. ¤ Old School Advertising: Back in the ‘olden days,’ marketers would seek out content that matched the goods and services they were selling, and place ads alongside that content. A fastener distributor might embed its ads in an article about new directions in the fastener industry, movers and shakers in the fastener industry, or new markets opening to fastener distributors. These days, they’re calling this old school technique ‘contextual targeting.’ But it’s the same idea: matching ads to content. ¤ Buying Someone Else’s Audience: While you may have some data on people who are interested in fasteners, another Web site – such as a fastener industry publication – may have plenty. Once third-party cookies are phased-out, expect more fastener distributors to buy and use info about such potential customers from such Web sites. ¤ Device Fingerprinting: Similar to third-party cookies, device fingerprinting is an extremely effective tracking technology – but also extremely controversial. Device fingerprinting enables a Web site to reach down into your device and retrieve all the information about that device that makes it unique to you – the language it runs on, the Web browser it uses, the times of day it’s usually used, its location, its IP address, and similar personalized data. Once an ad tech company has your device fingerprint, it can track you as you move across the Web. CONTINUED ON PAGE 121

THE DISTRIBUTOR’S LINK 121 JOE DYSART DEATH BY COOKIE: FASTENER DISTRIBUTORS NEED FOR A NEW WAY TO ADVERTISE ON THE WEB IN 2022 from page 120 ¤ Google FLoC: While Google is phasing-out support for third-party cookies, it still has every intention of continuing to track your every movement using its Chrome browser instead. To some, this distinction may sound like privacy hair-splitting. But either way, look for that tracking using the Chrome browser to most likely be leveraged by Google sometime in 2022. Specifically, Google says it will use the Chrome browser to track what you do on the Web – and then ‘anonymize’ that data by placing you in an anonymous group of people who share the same interest – what it calls ‘cohorts.’ So again, if you visit a lot of fastener Web sites, for example, you’ll be placed in a ‘cohort’ or group of people who do the same and sent fastener ads. Again, for many, this ‘anonymization’ may sound like privacy hairsplitting. But it’s the brave new world of digital advertising come 2022, for better or worse. Google began testing this new system – which it calls the Federated Learning of Cohorts, or ‘FLoC’ -- in April, with plans to offer use of the tech to select companies sometime in 2022. The only problem – at least from the perspective of outsiders – is that selling ads based on FLoC enables Google to become the sole source of information about the billions of people who use its Chrome Browser to surf the Web. Essentially: If you want to advertise to the people who use the Google Chrome Browser, you’re most likely going to need to rely on data gleaned by FLoC - which, whaddaya know, is also owned by Google. That cozy connection has led to cries of ‘No fair’ from competing ad tech service providers. And it has also triggered an antitrust lawsuit brought against Google by 14 states and Puerto Rico -- as well as preliminary scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Justice and commerce regulators in the United Kingdom. “Today’s filing underscores the broad consensus that Google’s practices require review and swift action under antitrust and consumer protection laws,” says Ken Paxton, Texas State Attorney General. Stay tuned for 2022. Should be interesting! JOE DYSART