MANILA, PHILIPPINES — For years, marketers have been using cookies to gather data from website visitors in order to improve user experience, target ads, and provide other services. With the looming phaseout of cookies, however, how will businesses adapt to the incoming cookieless era?
On Day Two of DIGIMAX: IMMAP Digicon 2023, Weldon Fung, Area Director of Southeast Asia at Meltwater, shared his insights on embracing the new era of social data and inferential insights.
“We are completely addicted to the digital crumbs that users leave behind,” he stressed.
The Philippines is considered the third internet capital of the world, where 37% of users now completely decline cookies. With this transition about to take place, marketers are realizing the importance of understanding how users share their data while failing to see their hyperfixation on the digital footprint left by users. Weldon explained that failing to adapt to the end of cookies could lead to an existential crisis for marketers.
To aid with the transition to a new era of data collection, Weldon addressed three key challenges faced by marketers today. First, there’s an obsession with personalization, treating it as an endpoint rather than a means to enhance the customer experience. Personalization should convey that the brand understands and supports the customer, and it should it not be overtly transactional. Second, there’s a relentless pursuit of first-party data, but this approach can result in targeting myopia—not knowing who or what you are connecting to can limit innovation, and become cost-ineffective as a result.
“Marketers are not data-poor […] What we are is data-rich, but insight poor,” Weldon highlighted. In this third challenge, he emphasized that marketers are drowning in a sea of data. Despite this, they don’t know how to use it to their advantage.
To address these challenges, marketers are encouraged to utilize contextualization with social data to enrich, enable, and formulate data points effectively. According to him, the key is to leverage inferred insights to guide marketing strategies and foster stronger connections with customers.
adobo Magazine is an official media partner of DIGIMAX: IMMAP Digicon 2023.
