The state of data: how Amazon sellers can know their shoppers in a cookie-less world

Image by Freepik

After years of stalling, Google has finally announced that it is not phasing out third-party cookies. 

Instead, it’s giving users the choice of opting in and out of cookies across their web browsing – similar to the way Firefox and Safari do things already. 

But that choice makes all the difference. Consumers are very aware of how valuable their data is to marketers, and they’re protective of it when browsing online. The third-party cookie may not be dead yet, but it’s certainly not what it once was. 

We think, for retailers, the data landscape of the future lies more in native ecommerce and retail media networks than in marketing cookies.

Let’s explore native ecommerce, retail media and what marketers can do to ensure they’re making the most of shoppers’ valuable data.

What’s the difference between first-party and third-party data? 

First, a quick explanation of what first-party data and third-party data mean. 

First-party data is collected by a business on its own website. We think most users would probably say they’re ok with a website using cookies to store some of their data for, let’s say, a better browsing experience, or for more personalised marketing offers. 

Third-party cookies, on the other hand, are data collected by various websites as users browse, and then accessed by buyers for advertising purposes – and these are much more of a privacy grey area. 

They’ve long been popular because they collect a lot of useful intent data, and allow advertisers to ‘follow’ their audience across different sites as they browse, targeting them with ads. 

But generally people don’t like not knowing who has their data, and how it will be used. Regulators hate cookies – partly because explaining what they are and how they are used in layman’s terms is so complicated that a lot of people still don’t even know what they are. Even despite the annoying pop-up boxes that jump up every time you visit a website.  

These are the kind of cookies that Google’s decision makes a lot easier for people to ignore. So advertisers can expect their usage and effectiveness to decrease. 

“Whether the cookie was to stay or go, the concept of consumer privacy isn’t going away. Users still have the ability to opt in/out of cookies, and many choose to opt out. Sharing data is all about trust; we can’t expect our customers to trust us with their data blindly, and as marketers, we should remember that trust is hard to build and easy to lose.”

- Jeff Cohen, Amazon Ads

What are retail media and native eCommerce? 

Retail media networks are advertising platforms where advertisers can buy space across several websites owned by the same company.  

And native eCommerce is the concept of people being able to “shop where they are” online, as retail is integrated into a single platform. 

The possibilities of first-party data, retail media and native eCommerce become apparent when you think about how many of the world’s biggest digital platforms are now owned by just a few mega-companies. 

Think of Google, with all its different owned products: YouTube, Android, Google Nest, Fitbit. Not to mention Google Search divisions like Shopping, Maps and Reviews. Many of these platforms have integrated eCommerce functions, so the shopper can hit ‘buy now’ without going elsewhere. Google can track its users through a single log-in as they use all its different products, and the user feels privacy-safe and data-secure in the process. And, crucially, Google can use this enormous amount of data to accurately target users and sell advertising space across all its brands.

Now let’s look at Amazon, and its many owned brands: Prime Video, Twitch, Alexa, Kindle. Not to mention subsidiary subscription services like Paramount+ and MGM+. All of these brands together make up Amazon’s retail media network: that is, an enormous platform for Amazon advertisers to project their messaging across, from a single, relatively simple to use, self-service platform. 

There’s also the likes of Buy with Prime, which allows retailers to integrate Prime for customer payments and/or delivery within their own website. Amazon is a pioneer here, broadening the barriers of native commerce through its services and technology.

“The main advantage of retail media platforms is that they rely mostly on 1st party data, in massive amounts, which helps in both accurate targeting as well as measurement. The advantage for consumers is transparency: they know their Amazon data is used for a better experience on Amazon, for example.”

- Claudiu Clement, e-Comas’s data wizard

As we briefly alluded to, a major benefit of huge retail media networks like Amazon’s is the incredible first-party data they offer their advertisers. 

So let’s dive into Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) as our favourite example. 

Amazon Marketing Cloud: how it works

AMC is a clean room data solution, allowing Amazon sellers to join first-party and third-party datasets from Amazon and other platforms, to create actionable insights into their own customers’ shopping behaviour. 

It gives you access, via API, to anonymised customer data signals for targeting your advertising - but in very inventive ways. 

For example, you can use AMC to understand how long it typically takes your customers to convert; how often they see your ads; and how many purchases are by repeat buyers vs. new customers. 

But you can also use it to explore ad-exposed vs. non-ad exposed purchases, to identify customer segments with the highest purchase values. Or how shoppers move between their phone, their TV and their laptop as they slide down the funnel towards a purchase. 

And you can use this data directly to create target audiences for your ad campaigns.

AMC has been around a few years now, and we’re huge fans of it. We’ve even trained all our staff at e-Comas in data literacy, to make sure everyone in the team can use AMC and help our clients get the most out of it. 

One of the things we love about AMC is that it’s completely privacy-aware. All the data is aggregated and anonymised, allowing brands to target not individuals, but audiences.

In a less cookie-focused world, with the likes of AMC, Amazon and other massive data platforms are going to provide much more targeted options for advertisers. 

We help all our clients leverage AMC for the very best results on Amazon. If you want to optimise your Amazon presence, using all available data, get in touch with us today!