Briefing

The impending death of third-party cookies has led to a rapid increase in the importance of first-party data for advertisers, in order to continue running digital advertising campaigns.

To connect brands and consumers on relevant websites using common data points, Google has launched a new post-cookieless audience solution called Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation, or PAIR.

This first-party data solution is one of many that Google expects brands and publishers to adopt as third-party cookies are deprecated on Chrome, and as a substitute for other browsers and apps that don’t pass third-party cookies or ad IDs.

How is PAIR privacy-safe?

PAIR allows brands to cross-reference their first-party datasets between advertisers and relevant publishers, helping you to reach your target audience in a post-cookieless world.

This cross-referencing of first-party data is performed at an aggregated level in order to safeguard any personally identifiable information shared with either of the primary partners, with Google claiming that intermediaries (including itself) will not be able to hack the encryption. We are awaiting further details to be shared on this.

For brands, this means that they can place addressable ads on websites where people have given permission for the advertising brand and the site to access their details. It also means that no personally identifiable information is shared throughout the process.

How does this work in practice?

Google has provided the follow example of how PAIR would work in practice:

Imagine you’re a shoe retailer and a group of people have signed up to your store’s mailing list. Separately, these same people on your list have also shared their email addresses with a publisher when browsing content online. 

With PAIR, you will be able to reach these people with relevant ads on that publisher’s website, because they have an existing relationship with you and with the publisher.

How can I incorporate PAIR into my programmatic strategy? 

There are likely to be a significant number of new cookieless audience solutions that appear between now and when third-party cookies sunset, which as it stands, will be 2024.

PAIR may be a key component in the SandBox solutions that Google will offer, test and evaluate, which has resulted in the delay in depreciation we have seen.

If you have any activity running on DV360 currently, we’d recommend testing PAIR alongside this activity to see how it performs. As other platforms and DSPs release their cookieless solutions, testing these against PAIR will give you a view of which solution works best for your brand.

At RocketMill, we’re testing these cookieless solutions to understand how they impact performance. If you’d like to get some tests set up for your brand, or you just want to discuss your post-cookieless strategy, please get in touch.