FAQ About 1st-Party Data, 3rd-Party Data and Pixels in Retail Performance Marketing
Retail Performance Marketing campaigns benefit from the use of integrated pixels, pixels that leverage first-party (1P) shopping activity data generated on the merchant’s own ecommerce site(s), to drive marketing performance.
We understand there is confusion about 1P data, third-party (3P) cookies and any role pixels may play in the pending data privacy shift to third-party cookie deprecation (3PCD). Brands and retailers have understandably raised questions about whether 3PCD might impact their ecommerce marketing campaigns, about how pixels are related, or whether pixels offer a solution to 3PCD. We hope the following FAQ can clarify confusion our partners may have and can answer some of the frequent questions we hear on these subjects.
DO I NEED TO USE A PIXEL ON MY CONNEXITY CAMPAIGN?
Yes. Integrating an ecommerce shopping activity pixel on your site, along with daily sales attribution reporting, are necessary data inputs for full performance optimization on the Connexity platform. These integrations provide critical information about which product offer placements resulted in purchase conversion as well as other signals about the volume of sales coming from each placement and which shopper traffic channels are driving more intent. All of these inputs enable Connexity to optimize bidding and pricing strategies to scale your campaign with greater efficiency.
WHAT'S THE BENEFIT OF USING THE TABOOLA/CONNEXITY PIXEL?
You increase exposure to more in-market shoppers. In addition to being an important input to campaign optimization, the Connexity pixel solution enables your product offers to be targeted to as many as 200M daily US, over 30M daily UK and over 30M more daily European visitors to premium online content.
As a Taboola company, Connexity scales the reach of retail campaigns into news, entertainment, sports and lifestyle content from over 9,000 publisher sites in the Taboola network. These include Yahoo content sites across many markets as well as premier content sites like Huffpost, NBC News, Buzzfeed, ESPN, MSN, Hearst properties, AOL, The Independent, Daily Express, Business Insider and more. The ecommerce pixel our retail partners integrate provides visibility into shopping activity events necessary to target offers to high-intent visitor profiles on these content sites.
WILL MY CONNEXITY CAMPAIGN STILL RUN WHEN 3RD-PARTY COOKIES AREN'T SUPPORTED?
Yes. Most solutions used in Connexity ecommerce performance campaigns do not rely on 3rd-party (3P) cookies to target the creation of incremental product ads across the various traffic sources in our network.
We leverage real-time user generated behavior. Many of the product placements we secure on behalf of retail partners are triggered based on the shopper’s own real-time, 1st-party (1P) search inputs. For example, based on user keyword searches in platforms like Bing Shopping, Yahoo Shopping and Google Shopping, Connexity bids on behalf of our retail partners to win highly competitive Product Listing Ads (PLA). In other examples, such as product comparisons, shopping showcases and mobile buy now pay later apps, product placements are generated based on the real-time search and/or product selection and filtering activity of the user.
Content creators use their own audience data. Connexity also operates programs that incentivize commerce content and social media creators to promote retail offers. In these cases editorial teams or social content creators generate product links in their own content. It’s the job of these creators to build compelling content that attracts large, high-intent audiences to their content sites - audiences that will be inspired to convert. In these cases, content owners mainly use their own 1P visitor data to fuel sophisticated audience development strategies and to optimize the creation of content to grow their monetization business.
WHAT WILL BE THE IMPACT FROM 3PCD AND HOW ARE CONNEXITY AND TABOOLA SUPPORTING ADVERTISERS THROUGH THIS?
Minimal impact to your Connexity campaign. Most of the solutions used in Connexity retail performance marketing campaigns do not rely on 3P cookies to drive performance.
Where cookies are used, such as in targeting Dynamic Product Ads to visitors of editorial content, we are already working on new methods of targeting. Here the potential impact is hard to quantify. This is especially true as new methodologies and technologies for targeting and retargeting are developing rapidly and being tested. So, instead of trying to measure impacts, Taboola is focusing energy on developing new methods for ad targeting based on our unique assets and expertise, and will provide insights along the way to help increase confidence with our customers.
WHAT SHOULD ADVERTISERS DO NOW TO PREPARE FOR UPCOMING CHANGES?
Increase and optimize your collection and integration of first-party data to drive performance. Advertisers should continue to run their campaigns as normal, with optimal pixel/server-to-server set-up and a focus on ensuring they adhere to current best practices. In addition, advertisers can consider increasing their collection of first-party data over the coming months to mitigate the impact that the deprecation of third party cookies will have.
It’s important to note that Google has again delayed the deprecation of 3rd-party cookies, now until early 2025. Regardless, we’ll continue to update our guidance for advertisers over the coming months, as a more definitive picture emerges of changes and impacts.