The Death of the Third-Party Cookie : A qualitative study regarding new strategies and methods for collecting consumer data to obtain effective digital marketing

Abstract: Abstract  The digital marketing industry currently undergoes a change regarding strategies and methods for effective marketing due to the fact that Google in 2023 will remove their support for third-party cookies on their search engine. Today's version of digital marketing has been and is still somewhat reliant on the use of third-party cookies to identify user patterns to create personalized advertising content through for example retargeted ads. Industries undergo changes regularly to adapt their strategy to best fit the constantly evolving digital market where new entrants and technological advancements are two forms of disruptions that occur regularly.  This qualitative study aims to discuss the future of digital advertisement from a marketers’ perspective and how digital marketers’ advertising strategies plan to change and adapt in the aftermath of the death of the third-party cookie. The findings are based on interpretations of semi-structured interviews with digital marketing specialists. The results show that there are different approaches to replace the third-party cookies.  Keywords: Third-party cookies, First-party cookies, Digital disruption, Digital marketing strategies