How to Be a Cookie-Less Media Planner Who Rejects Cookie-Cutter Media Plans

When I was a kid, we used to drive around neighbourhoods looking at cars. It’s not that we were particularly into cars as a family. The thing was, we moved a lot - every 14 months on average. So we were constantly evaluating neighbourhoods. That’s why my mom developed this shorthand of judging a neighbourhood by its cars. You can find out a lot about the type of people living in a house by what’s on their driveway. A muddy SUV with a bike rack says something about you. A tiny two-seater with a cover says something else. A two-seater without a cover, yet something entirely different. 

What’s interesting is that all cars in a neighbourhood are sort of similar. That’s because we buy cars on the recommendation of our friends and neighbours. But there is a deeper truth at work here. A truth that my mom never articulated: consumerism is an act of validation. We buy things to signal where we belong in our community. Everyone in a community establishes their place through the brands they buy and display to others. 

In this context advertising becomes the craft of validation, instead the art of persuasion. That means advertising’s job is to make you feel like you made the right choice by buying this brand, shopping at that store, or donating to that cause. 

Don’t single people out

Yet we try to single people out in advertising all the time with paid media. We think we can and should target people individually based on a few signals. We think people will love our brand because we caught them at the right time with the right recommendation. But even if that was possible -  spoiler alert: it is not, it wouldn’t be very effective at all. When singling me out, it makes me feel uncomfortable. Like when the folks on busy intersections holler at me to explain why I should donate to their cause.

This race to personalise is why advertisers are breathing a sigh of relief after Google’s U-turn decision to keep cookies a while back. “I have been saying for years now to our industry, to Google, and even to Wall Street that I think it is a strategic mistake for Google to get rid of third-party cookies," says the head of advertising platforms at the Trading Desk.  

But I maintain that tracking people is not an advertising superpower. It’s a false narrative.

Instead of tracking people with cookies to personalise, we should recognise that our current media landscape is splitting our mainstream culture into infinite communities and subcultures. The true paradigm shift of modern media isn’t that it lets us track our audience one to one. The biggest paradigm shift is that modern media has isolated everyone inside their own community fueled by their interests. This new world presents a great opportunity for media planners.

Cookie-less media planners reject cookie-cutter media plans

Paid media (the delivery vehicle of advertising) is critical in reaching the right subcultures. Now, when we place our brands where people are with their peers we help validate their choices. To do so we have to understand that different subcultures use different platforms differently. For example, in our investigation into the rising chess subculture, we found how chess-influencers (we coined them Chessfluencers) dominate Twitch with live matches for the experienced player, but recruit novice players via educational content on YouTube. Likewise, Entrepreneurs use closed Slack groups to exchange ideas, but parents tend to use closed Facebook Groups. Each subculture uses digital platforms in different ways to build community and cultivate a sense of belonging. To reach those communities, the modern media planner rejects cookie-cutter media plans and instead seeks to understand the nuanced media habits of various subcultures. 

In this old-new-world-of-some-cookies-but-not-all-cookies we need to stop layering more costly targeting solutions to your media in an attempt to track a single individual. We need to ask which communities, tribes, or subcultures are most relevant to our brand. Then ask how they interact with media and how our brands can show up where they are with their peers, authentically.

This is how we become relevant and create brand love!