By Julia Tabisz • December 27, 2023 • 7 min read •
Ivy Liu
Unveiling the Hottest Marketing and Media Trends of 2023
This research is based on unique data collected from our proprietary audience of publisher, agency, brand and tech insiders. It’s available to Digiday+ members. More from the series →
This year has been a bit of an emotionally exhausting one, whether you’re talking about marketing or media. The economy, fragmenting social platforms, revenue (or lack thereof) — we’ve all been through a lot.
Throughout the year, Digiday+ Research tracked the ups and downs in the media and marketing industries through regular surveys of publisher, agency, brand and retailer professionals. Below, we round up the biggest trends of the year, based on the data that resonated the most with our readers.
2023’s foremost revelation: We may face a world without cookies as soon as next year
The death of the third-party cookie is actually a real thing that is coming in the near future (we think). So Digiday readers wanted to know what marketers and publishers alike were doing to prepare. Those preparations turned out to be all over the map, but we can at least say that preparations for a cookieless world were definitely underway in 2023 in both the marketing and media industries.
Prime takeaways include:
- 73% of agency pros said they agreed somewhat or strongly that their businesses were actively preparing for a cookieless future in the second quarter of this year.
- 72% of brand pros said in Q2 they agreed somewhat or strongly that their businesses were actively preparing for the third-party cookie to go away. But only 31% fell into the “agree strongly” category.
- 70% of agency pros said in Q2 their businesses are spending more on contextual targeting campaigns to prepare for the end of the third-party cookie — up from 47% last year — making contextual targeting the top cookie alternative among agencies as of halfway through the year.
- 69% of brand pros said in Q2 they’re investing in technology to acquire more first-party data, making first-party data the clear winner among brands when it comes to what exactly will replace the third-party cookie.
- 16% of brands said in Q2 they’ve decreased their digital ad spend as the third-party cookie comes to an end, up from 7% last year.
- 69% of publisher pros said in Q2 they agreed somewhat or strongly that their businesses were actively preparing for the death of the third-party cookie.
- 82% of publisher pros said in Q2 they are currently using first-party data to prepare for the cookie’s demise, and nearly half are also taking first-party data-related actions: 44% said they’re requiring users to register and 43% said they’re integrating first-party data segments into demand-side platforms.
- 59% of publisher pros said in Q2 that Apple will gain a lot or a little from the end of the cookie,
