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With Google Chrome slated to deprecate cookies by the end of this year, marketers are looking for new signals to find and measure potential audiences. Transaction data—records of what we purchase—is emerging as an alluring alternative.
The promise of transaction data has fueled the retail commerce media industry, which is projected to grow by 28.5% to $59.6 billion in U.S. ad spend this year, per Insider Intelligence.
Retail media firms, notably Amazon and Walmart, can use their customer databases to target ads on their websites and across the internet, and then link those ads with purchases, without relying solely on cookies for closed-loop attribution.
Some think transaction data might become a necessary currency for all media companies, and not just retailers. Only walled gardens with successful commerce businesses can succeed in a post-cookie world because, without cookies, the likes of Meta and TikTok won’t be able to track whether ads on their platforms lead to purchases on brands’ websites.
“If you don’t have a payments business, you can’t build an ads business,” said James Borow, co-founder of ecommerce marketing tech company Market AI.
Others note that transaction data can never fully replace cookies, because these signals are not identifiers. Retail media firms need an email address or cookie in order to know that the person who saw the soap ad bought the soap. Still, in a world where many signals go dark for advertisers, transaction data may emerge as a more critical resource.
The social commerce thesis
Without cookies, even walled gardens will lose their edge for marketers, which need to be able to show that their ads drove conversions, Borow said. When Apple deprecated mobile identifiers on iOS in 2021, Meta struggled to correctly report conversions, causing some marketers to move spend away from the platform. These problems could be exacerbated when third-party cookies are no longer available on the open web.
“You need to have the transaction data to optimize your auction,” Borow said. “Without knowing the types of things that [customers] purchased, it’s very hard to make sure you’re showing the right ad to the right person.”
