Preparing for the 2023 deprecation of third party cookies (3PC) requires solving for multiple use cases for buyers. Our Prepper Playbook for Advertisers can help you break down preparation into digestible goals.
Why it matters — According to a joint study by TripleLift and AdAge only 69% of marketers have implemented solutions that solve for privacy and identity -- in part, this is due to a lack of knowledge of which solutions exist and are applicable to their use cases. With 2023 closing in on us there’s an urgent need for buyers to start laying the groundwork and doing discovery on solutions that fit their media execution needs. The Prepper Playbook for Advertisers provides some general guidelines and battlecards to kickstart the conversation.
But this may seem like an enormous task given many solutions are still mid-development as the industry coalesces to test out and understand what will be viable from a technical and regulatory perspective. With the mystery and confusion out there buyers are in need of actionable guidelines that help clear a path forward.
We developed the Prepper Playbook for Advertisers to provide such guidelines to advertisers and agencies. Below are some highlights from our Prepper Playbook, starting with thinking about the challenges buyers will face when it comes to media execution and campaign management and ending with some forward-looking guidance.
Excerpts from the Prepper Playbook for Advertisers
What challenges are buyers facing right now?
With the end of third-party cookies (3PC) media planning will become fragmented and browser-focused, which means a huge shift from how buyers might normally plan campaigns.

Not to mention…
- Campaign reach may be impacted given that there’s a likely chance of overlap in targeting strategies, due to competing solutions
- Without 3PC or broad ID adoption, retargeting will look more like lookalike targeting and will not be at the device level
- Retargeting may not be as successful as shifting budget to prospecting campaigns or other upper/mid-funnel tactics
What should buyers do to prepare for changes in measurement?
We know that measurement will be impacted in a post-3PC world, likely with cross-domain measurement becoming limited to what browsers provide. Measurement will likely be limited in scope compared to what 3PC allows, resulting in more siloed measurement. Think: site-by-site, id-by-id, contextual segment-by-contextual segment, etc. During this time, it’s important for buyers to investigate their current metrics and measurement strategy and understand the likely limitations the future holds.
Questions buyers should ask themselves:
- What are my current KPIs?
- What does my frequency capping look like?
- Do I use a DMP that doesn’t rely on 3PC?
- Do I have a way to leverage my 1P data?
- Should I start looking at cohort data (i.e. Privacy Sandbox)?
What else can buyers do to prepare in 2022?
Test & Learn
Buyers can use Safari and Firefox, which have already deprecated 3PC, as testing grounds to find solutions that work for you. You can also use this time to evaluate creatives, formats, and performance metrics that meet your brand’s needs.
- Do some creative assets work better for campaigns that run on non-3PC browsers?
- For those browsers, are some ad formats more helpful than others?
- Which performance metrics are still available with those browsers?
- Of those available performance metrics, which have the most impact on future campaign decision making?
Develop a portfolio approach to privacy and identity
While identity solutions are important for marketers looking to onboard their first party (1P) data, buyers may still need to diversify their approach to solving for privacy and identity in order to de-risk their future. This might run the gamut from leveraging 1P data to solving for Privacy Sandbox to digging into what would modernize contextual buys to be successful. Supply and other adtech partners who develop multimodal approaches will be able to support a greater range of buyers’ use cases. And buyers who also develop a portfolio approach to solving for P&I will find themselves avoiding a major pitfall: too many eggs, one basket.
Like what you saw? Dig deeper with more actionable battlecards in the Prepper Playbook for Advertisers.