The slow demise of the cookie was supposed to be bad news for measuring direct response and performance campaigns. Yet there is now light at the end of the tunnel. Exciting new solutions are emerging, combining cutting-edge technology with established, tried and tested techniques.
The Heineken Company ran a campaign earlier this year, in partnership with us at Nano and Circana, that combined intent targeting with point-of-sale data. The result? An ROI that was 43% above its target.
At the time, Heineken’s programmatic lead Dan Glynn noted: “By using combined intent personas and point-of-sale data, we’ve been able to measure ROI without the reliance of cookies, IDs or other people-based tracking methods. This has been an important takeaway for future campaigns across the Heineken brand.”
This has proved to be the case, and the new approach was further established in a follow-up campaign for Foster’s Shandy. Glynn stated “With this being a new product launch exclusively off-trade, it was important to report back on ROI, and we saw great results”. Results included: an ROI of £3.45 (almost three times the £1.25 benchmark); a 2.7% sales uplift over the full measured period, which extended to a 1.2% sales uplift for the overall Fosters brand.
An accompanying brand lift study also showed a drop in competitor brand perceptions among those exposed to the campaign, validating the campaign’s impact.
The future is contextual
Nano used Circana’s ProScores insights to inform planning based on sales propensity at a geo level with distribution, market share and category trends. To optimise delivery to areas in the UK with qualified sales opportunities, this data was layered onto Nano’s vertical insights food and drink category plus its Intent Personas segment for “alcohol drinker”.
Using ProScores also enabled Heineken to measure direct response without the need for cookies, other IDs, or any form of user profiling. This may be a key point because Nano’s research suggests that more than half (52%) of UK consumers would be more likely to choose a brand if it could prove it never collected or used any personal information for advertising.
The same report also revealed that 70% of the UK is opting out of people-based tracking - another reason Nano’s intent targeting steers clear of cookie-like IDs or building profiles of individual consumers. It is built instead on insights that range from estimated search terms used to reach a specific page, to time of day or weather. This is added to next-gen contextual information and placement-level performance insights, and all recorded in Nano’s LIIFT™ Platform.
Contextual represents a future-proof solution to signal loss, dodging any further disruption that cookie-like solutions face in 2025. Its evolution is also part of a wider industry trend, impacting areas from TV to attention and media mix modelling, where new solutions that combine cutting-edge tech with long-established techniques are leading the way forward.
This is especially important as the benefits and pitfalls of AI become clearer. It is also why many of these more consumer-centric solutions are combining the scale and speed of automation with the checks and balances of research panels, to avoid “hallucinations” as new and old approaches complement each other.
Signal loss, brand gain
Blending all of the above-mentioned non-people-based data points enables Nano to build custom targeting strategies focused on scalability and relevance that are dynamically optimised to deliver performance.
In an increasingly cookieless world, the ability to measure performance using technology that understands the intent of users, the meaning of the campaign, and the overall contextual environment in a brand-safe, privacy-first manner is critical for advertisers looking to future-proof against signal loss.
Vanessa O’Connell - Director of Marketing & Communications at Nano Interactive