75% of marketers still rely heavily on third-party cookies

Cookie-based advertising is on its last legs, but not enough marketers have moved on. A full 75% of marketers still rely heavily on third-party cookies, according to a new Adobe study.

Going in the wrong direction. Some 45% of marketers are spending at least half their budgets on campaigns and other activations based on third-party cookies, according to the study. The report surveyed 2,667 full-time marketing and customer experience leaders in the U.S., Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and India.

Surprisingly, 64% plan to increase their spending on cookie-based activations this year.

Dig deeper: 3 ways marketers can prepare for a cookieless future

Writing on the wall. The real head-scratcher is how many marketers are aware of the opportunities lost when overlooking cookieless environments. Eight-three percent say at least 30% of their market is in environments where third-party cookies don’t work, the study found.

Nearly half of companies say over 50% of their potential market is found in cookieless environments like social media platforms and on Apple devices.

As a consequence, over three-quarters expect the end of third-party cookies will hurt their businesses, Adobe found. Thirty-seven percent expect a moderately negative impact, 23% expect significant harm. And 16% of marketers said the end of cookies will be “devastating” to their businesses.

Why we care. To be fair, marketers aren’t going all-in on cookieless strategies because tech giants like Google are waffling on their phase-out.

Brands should take a nuanced approach in order to meet their customers where they are and whether those environments use third-party cookies. But they should also keep in mind the spirit of the cookie phaseout, which is built around consumer privacy and trust. Deep relationships with customers are forged through intentional data sharing, where each side knows what the other knows.