The Death of Cookies - Or Not - With Andre Steenekamp

Greg Stewart: Welcome to No Free Lunch, Africa's freshest business and tech podcast. I'll say that again, Africa's freshest business and tech podcast with me, host, Greg Stewart. And our discussion today is about cookies. And no, I'm not going to share my grandma's favorite cookie recipes.

Rather, we'll be looking at the electronic cookie and the digital tracking associated with cookies and the rather odd turn that Google made about doing away with these in 2024. after causing mayhem in the digital marketing space. And my guest today is an old colleague of mine, Steenkamp, the founder and managing director of the Strategy Room, a Cape Town based digital marketing and strategy consultancy. Welcome to No Free Lunch, Andre.

Andre Steenekamp: Thanks Greg, good to be here. Always good to chat with you. Greg Stewart: Always good to chat to you and really good to have your expertise. You've been involved with digital strategy and online strategy for while now ⁓ in various different companies.

And ⁓ you have a good ⁓ view of the situation, shall we call it. Andre Steenekamp: Yeah. Yeah. Greg Stewart: ⁓ Let's dive into that a bit.

Certainly, timeline, I think it started around 2020 when Google announced that, my goodness, to the despair of the whole digital marketing community that cookies were going to die a sudden death. Talk to us a bit about what motivated that and how did that all transpire? Andre Steenekamp: Yeah, it's quite an interesting thing. I Google possibly controls the majority of all website traffic through mostly through the Chrome browser.

They also have the largest ad platform on the planet. So they were getting a lot of flak for tracking user behavior and then on selling it, et cetera, et cetera. So there was a real drive for anonymization across platforms, et cetera. So they decided that they were going to replace it with something different and announced, as you said, in January 2020, this is the end of the cookies.

We need to start planning for it. We're to give you a horizon. I think they gave it an 18 or 24 month horizon and everybody scrambled around trying to figure out how to work around this. Interestingly, then the deadline was then moved from 2022 to 2023, then again to 2024.

And eventually in July 2024, they just said, sorry, we scrapping this idea. It's a bad idea. And the thing is, a couple of the smaller web browsers like Firefox and that they'd already blocked all form of cookie measurement. Greg Stewart: Yeah.

Yeah. Andre Steenekamp: And then majority of the users, as you're a user, you can also go into your browser settings and block that. ⁓ they still found that they had about 65 % of the market. And I think they wanted to lose the value of being able to tell what people are doing, where they're going.

⁓ And if they weren't, like in the old days, actually selling that onto big companies credit cards, et cetera, et cetera, at least it gave them more power within their ad engines to tell you what was. Greg Stewart: Yeah. Let's just chat about exactly what a cookie is, shall we? Andre Steenekamp: what was user behavior influenced by, et cetera.

yeah. Greg Stewart: It's essentially a tracking or a piece of code or a piece of that gets inserted on websites that allows various players, whether they be search engines or websites to actually trace people to their IP address. that very, very clearly what it is? It's a tracking.

Andre Steenekamp: Yeah. Yeah, a nutshell, it is. It's a little tracking tag. And what it does is it passes on the information.

So if you go from site A to site B, it just says, this guys just come from there. And it passes in very basic terms, passes on that information so that they can see exactly what your journey has been over a lookup period. mean, it depends on how things are set. But for a lot of people, you can be tracked up to 90 days, history of what your web browser activity has been.

Greg Stewart: in of the whole privacy thing, Andrea, ⁓ it become a growing concern ⁓ across the globe, and it's become pretty invasive. In fact, most people don't believe me when I say to them, Google knows more them than their mother. ⁓ But the reality is that if you've got your turned on on your phone, Andre Steenekamp: Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Greg Stewart: They know where you've been, they know when, long you spent there. There's sorts of other things that almost every individual on the planet is trapped by some means or another. And it become And I think that's the major concern that raised.

also becomes a market is paradise, doesn't it? Andre Steenekamp: Yeah. Greg Stewart: People say that nobody listens in on your conversations, but we know from some of the court cases that have happened in the States, for instance, on things like Siri and so on, that Google was definitely listening in on those conversations. Talk to us about that invasiveness of modern digital marketing and technology.

And when you say, I've had a headache and suddenly a headache pull ad pops up on your browser, Is it just coincidence? it all conspiracy? Where are we going on this stuff? Andre Steenekamp: Yeah, no, absolutely.

think people, you are being tracked. I mean, it's pretty obvious. This has been an issue for quite some time. I mean, I remember showing a joke video to audiences 10 years ago, even maybe more about it.

set of people sitting inside like a call center, listening in on conversations and then sending ads to those people. a joke and it was a parody from Australia, but in actual fact, it's pretty much what it is. And even to this day, ⁓ still quite surprised that, know, my will mention something about budgerigars and next thing she's getting adverts from pet stores. It does and that ⁓ is listening.

Greg Stewart: Yeah. Andre Steenekamp: it's technically meant to be anonymized, you know, when they do listen. you know, they're picking up on this device, the number on the device and then serving based off that conversation. But yeah, the laws come in, especially, you know, for us, we've Papaya, ⁓ Poppy Act.

The EU has got the GDPR. In the it's a bit more gray. California has got the strongest, it's closest to GDPR, California Privacy Act or something to that effect. But the most of the United States, ⁓ there's real laws around tracking and privacy, cetera, et cetera.

And I think that's what stimulated this whole Google cookies conversation in the beginning because... Greg Stewart: And they should tip-top. Andre Steenekamp: federal governments around the United States, for each of the states, were saying, well, we don't think it's our role to manage We think the ad platform should do it, et cetera, et And there was a lot of sort test cases around that, and that's why it happened. I still think that they continue monitor us and continue to save our data and to get a better understanding of what we do.

But it's supposed to be ⁓ anonymized these And you know, Greg Stewart: Hmm. Andre Steenekamp: For somebody like me who's in digital marketing, it is a bit of a catch-22 because I don't like the fact that I'm being followed around the internet, but at the same time, when I'm clients on behalf of my prospects, on behalf of my clients, I ⁓ like to be able to target people. I don't need to know that it's Greg Stewart that I'm targeting, but I need to know that it's somebody with similar traits to you that lives in a geographic location that I'm after, et cetera.

So think that's where the difference lies. most the data that we're tracking is anonymized. we even it, example, on out of home. Out home has always been a tricky one to measure because you have traffic along a freeway riding past a particular sign.

And then somebody came up with some formula to extrapolate how many people and how many eyeballs, et cetera, et cetera. ⁓ Well, now with mobile phones and the IME and I numbers in your mobile phone, they can actually tell at this particular time, that's how many people drove past based on the number of phones that went past. it's becoming a little bit more accurate, but they're not allowed to say it was Greg Stewart that drove past. So it has its pros and cons.

as far as I'm concerned, think we like that ability. The interesting part is that Greg Stewart: Yeah. Yeah. you.

Andre Steenekamp: as these laws change, AI is going to be able to, it's at this point still quite a lawless component of the internet. And most of the big AI businesses are still making things up. And at the moment, there's no rules around how AI can track you along. So that's where the interesting conundrums coming up.

Greg Stewart: Sure. Sure. And everyone's downloading some sort of AI app on their phone. all those conversations that you have in on AI, they're certainly not anonymized.

directly you. Andre Steenekamp: Yeah. Correct. Greg Stewart: And if you consider then that like Google, now has ⁓ AI is German, I think, ⁓ that, you know, they link two together, that becomes quite a powerful way of knowing a lot about you.

And in terms of that, is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? And will AI shift whole tracking thing? Andre Steenekamp: Yep.

Greg Stewart: How does that actually leave the world? If somebody wants to previously, I a website, I people come onto the website, I could have a cookie that track those people. But now they're not even coming to my website. They're going directly to chat GBT or Gemini or whatever the case, to search stuff.

How does that change that whole scenario for ⁓ digital marketers? Andre Steenekamp: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a very interesting one.

let me just start quickly by just, I've just finished reading book. It's called Deus. ⁓ I don't if you've heard of it or read it. It's a very interesting book about where humans as a species are and, you know, what's the next sort of level for that.

Greg Stewart: didn't know. Andre Steenekamp: It's by Yuval Noah Harari. I'm not too sure if you've read the book or had any experience with it. But as far back as 2016, they could better predict the outcomes of a US election via Google than they could by any other poll.

So Google knows all your behavior, what you're doing, what your conversations are. And in that, can predict that you are going to vote Democrats or Republican or whoever the person is in your state, et cetera, et cetera. And they came up with like a 90 % correct indication of how states were going to vote. So this information is quite crazy.

And that was nearly 10 years ago, right? So now we've got AI. And unless when you sign up for ChatGPT or Claude or... Greg Stewart: Amazing.

Andre Steenekamp: any of those, unless you go into the settings and actually say that you're not allowed to use my data for your learning models, which then actual fact sort of reduces the effectiveness of those models, because that's learning from us every day. ⁓ If don't state that, it can utilize your questions, your answers, et cetera, et cetera, for what they call research purposes, but in actual fact, you know. Greg Stewart: Yeah. Andre Steenekamp: we learned from Cambridge Analytica a few years ago that research purposes can be used for dark ops and other things.

it's very interesting conundrum. I think until we get some sort of legal framework around this, because at the moment, everyone in the internet is for whether you call it GEO, or ASO, or whichever, agentic. ⁓ version of SEO that you want to call it. previously, if you did a search, Google would give you a list of everything that matches your search.

And sometimes it could be pages and pages and pages long. Most people only really looked at the first page. So what's happened is when your AI agents do the search, Greg Stewart: Yes. Andre Steenekamp: They only come back with what they believe according to your prompt and your questions and your history with them.

is the sample that is for you. So you don't get a long list of things and then use your rational brain and your logic to go through and say, ⁓ actually, this is the best one that serves me. The AI is now what's best. So you're getting more or less one response back.

Now, that ⁓ makes... things very tricky because, you know, how do, how do, you websites ⁓ that they are the one response that comes back to you? So it then starts, you know, going, realistic your, your, your page going to be that you can be the one ranks on AI for that search? So ⁓ it's going to quite a interesting scramble.

And I Greg Stewart: Yes. Andre Steenekamp: That's where a lot of people are thinking, we don't need to worry too much about cookies now because AI is going to find the answer, but AI is not. AI is going to find a limited answer. So yeah, it is a thing.

I based on that and the legal regulations that are going to come in force around that, hopefully, it's going to be tougher and tougher to find the right audience. So then we need to change our Greg Stewart: ⁓ And in terms of actual numbers that I've seen, apparently that were using like Google and so on, they've seen their numbers dive ⁓ from search Andre Steenekamp: Hmm. Yeah. Greg Stewart: ⁓ as AI has become more prominent.

of the figures ⁓ were saying that the traffic had ⁓ by as much as 60%. People are just using AI to search. So does have a massive impact on people's and so on. And one can only imagine that at some point in time, as in the past, it's going to become a legal issue and that going to be court cases around this.

as you earlier, the AI regulatory environment is still scarce at the moment. It's still ⁓ in its infancy. Andre Steenekamp: Mm. Greg Stewart: So if, instance, AI is killing off business search, there may be a case, a legal case, to argued that this needs to be regulated.

And of course, regulation isn't always the best way to deal with these things. But perhaps at some point in time, there has to be some sort of either some kind of digital solution, perhaps some sort of elegant compute solution to that else just channels will be created. And perhaps that's where the opportunity lies for entrepreneurs and tech entrepreneurs to actually what replaces cookies. know, we was the question that we started with in terms of in 2020.

my goodness, what's going on? How are we going to deal with the situation? But inevitably, there's always some kind of solution. In that case, was backing down, I think, for its own good.

I think they still have a large income from their search advertising. But certainly, in terms where the solution is to come from next, mean, some of the learned in 2020 about first-party data starting to do Andre Steenekamp: Mm-hmm. Greg Stewart: sort of build your own first party data, build your own channels. You've got different communication channels popping out of the woodwork every second day.

Maybe that there will be brand new interesting channels that marketers can start using. Andre Steenekamp: Hmm. I mean, new channels will always emerge. think you're In 2020, the hot question first-party data.

So everyone was running around. Companies that could afford it were going, buying data management platforms and things like that help them manage their data. All very good, bearing in mind that most of the data management platforms come out of the United States to a lesser degree out of Europe, which makes them very, very expensive. So the whole exercise around what do we do around cookies became a very expensive exercise for most brands and companies in this country.

You the same thing is, you know, Google was providing Greg Stewart: Yes. Andre Steenekamp: workarounds for US companies, etc, etc, but not for us because we were such a small market. We're so insignificant. We're like a little blip, know, in the grand scheme of things.

So, you know, definitely had to figure out ways of understanding who our were. And I think first party data, you know, ⁓ if you're with customers, that is direct online, you know, direct to consumer that kind of thing, then that's great because you've got their data, you've got their information, you anonymize it, and you can utilize that to find lookalike audience or similar audiences, etc, etc. Now, there's a talk what they call zero-party data, and it's supposed to trump first-party data, and that is where you engage directly with your clients and you ask them ⁓ the questions that want to know.

Greg Stewart: Yes. Andre Steenekamp: ⁓ directly. So you go and you ask them through quizzes and polls, etc, etc. are they looking for?

How would they react to this? Whatever the question is that you want around your customers. And you're getting direct from them. And ⁓ allows not only to do sort of relevance targeting, it also allows you to do contextual because now you know what kind of things people like and what they're more likely to read, et et cetera.

So think from that perspective, that's where we're probably heading. We find a way of using AI tools to enhance that and to enrich that data before you send it out into the wild. So I think if people down on again, not a cheap exercise, you know, There's a popular one that I won't name and it's probably the most expensive one in the country, but everyone seems to be going for There are a number of others. But, you know, ⁓ I've seen some people running it effectively just on an Excel spreadsheet.

So depends on how sophisticated you want to be. ⁓ I think getting to know who your customers are, setting up a proper CRM, sending questionnaires, quizzes without harassing them or making them feel, you know, if there's... ⁓ Greg Stewart: Cool. Andre Steenekamp: You know, as with anything on the internet, there's something in it for me.

I'm highly likely to respond and to do something nicely. So if you send a discount or a voucher or something like that, then you can do proper attribution. So you've got a little bit of first party data, a little bit of zero party data, ⁓ you can now start enriching that through AI and getting a very good sense of who your customers are and what they want. So think that's probably for now the way to go in the future.

Certainly before we get involved again, as we mentioned in the legal. Greg Stewart: That's right. Yeah. Andre Steenekamp: the legalese around all of that.

Greg Stewart: Yeah, yeah. And it certainly seems like marketing is almost going full circle back to know your customer better opposed to just having a convenient that just tracks them and and ⁓ hounds day and based on the discussions and ⁓ the search. just talking about future strategies, advice for people. we talked to lot of Andre Steenekamp: Yeah.

Greg Stewart: business people, what should business people should be, what they should be doing for what should they be doing? Where are the first steps? What are the most important things for them to do? Andre Steenekamp: Yeah.

my and this goes back nearly 20 years, probably, yeah, close to 20 years, is stop the immediate knee-jerk reaction to everything. So platform announcements, new product announcements, et cetera, et cetera. And I saw this sort of 2007 when was becoming a marketing platform. Greg Stewart: Yeah.

Andre Steenekamp: Businesses didn't know how to react to it. They didn't know if social media was something that was going to be something. just had a lot of people telling them stuff and, you they just ran out and reacted. And they spent a lot of money paying for specialists and industry experts, et et cetera, to help them guide social media guidelines, you know, for their businesses.

And that was just as I said, a knee-jerk reaction. And then we've seen it happen over and over again each time. a new platform comes out each time something new comes out. saw it with the cookies, know, cookies.

So ran out, found experts and two happened. Either some people really did get a good data management system and a platform that works and ⁓ utilizes and feed it in and you know, it sits in the cloud and it's wonderful ⁓ and it's and they're using it well. majority of people pretty PDFs on what to do and nobody did any action for it and they spent. millions of bucks doing it.

So I think my advice is, don't overreact, don't knee-jerk react to anything. Make sure that internally, you know what you've got. Build your systems regardless of all the noise and you understand, as you said, marketing has been around for thousands of years, in Sydney advertising. You've got a product, you want to sell it, you need to find an audience.

Find the easiest way to connect A to B. That's for me the best way. Don't overreact. And I'm seeing it again now with AI.

Everyone's talking about AI. Your feeds are swamped on every social media platform. like, you're going to lose your job. not going to do this.

You're going to, you know, blah, blah, blah. You don't need to hire your marketing person. You can fire your agency. All this nonsense, because all they're trying to really do is to get reactions to engagement on their posts that they can get paid by whoever the platform is that they're on.

The idea is that, you know, AI is a tool. Greg Stewart: Mm-hmm. Andre Steenekamp: And it's a tool that we should use to enhance what we do. It's not going to replace anything.

mean, even, you know, the first real bits of AI that frightened people was in the creative side of the world. You know, people were watching videos and realizing that, you know, but if you watch any of those videos carefully, you can see that it's, that it's AI. My other concern is, that, you know, junior to mid-level marketers are using AI to write everything. Greg Stewart: Yeah.

Andre Steenekamp: They're writing their response to their clients, they're writing their briefs, et cetera, et cetera. they're sending out communication, you can clearly see if you experience that that is written by AI. And the worst is that they're using that and sending it out without actually understanding what they're saying. So there's no learning, there's grasping the concept or anything like that.

So the idea is that just calm down, use your head, your own data. Greg Stewart: Yes. Andre Steenekamp: Use things that you know, make sure that whatever you do measurable. So you can measure ⁓ activities in some form or other.

you and just be level-headed it. think that, you know, panic is the scenario and there's always going to be a bunch of people around to take advantage of companies that are panicking. There'll always be a specialist or an expert or a consultant who'll say, I'll come in. ⁓ Greg Stewart: Sure.

Yeah. Andre Steenekamp: And I've seen it, I've seen that I've worked with that have brought in consultants for AI for hundreds of thousands of rands. And the next week, whatever they said was being changed because there's been new developments. ⁓ just constant, it's an thing.

just stay on of it, don't panic. Greg Stewart: I think that's absolutely sound advice. have to sometimes stop and breathe, take a look around us and be about the decisions we make for our businesses. And the other is know your business, know your clients and create relationships with client that don't necessarily rely on some technology.

⁓ Andre Steenekamp: Mm-hmm. Mm. Greg Stewart: It's really important that human intellect and human capital is maintained in these processes because ultimately, it comes to marketing and communication, it's a human thing. And the one thing that I can know sure is that in another years, there's still going to be new platforms and challenges.

Andre Steenekamp: Yep. Greg Stewart: But you'll always need that human capital. You'll always need that human intellect ⁓ input into many of these things. So, thank you for taking us through the journey of cookies.

And it's good talking to you again. And I really hope we get to chat about some more digital and marketing things going into the future. Thank you very much for joining me on the show. Andre Steenekamp: Hmm.

I would love that. Thank you very much for having me. Appreciate it.