Facebook’s Erik Johnson Says Cookies Are Unreliable For Marketing

Facebook’s Erik Johnson opened his talk at Web Summit, a tech and marketing conference in Dublin, with the statement that, “If you gain a young person as a customer, they’ll be your customer for life.” While this is a common idea among marketers, Johnson’s view on the ineffective nature of cookies is less universal.

This initial statement set the stage for Johnson’s talk about the complex challenges of mobile marketing and attribution. As he is the Head of Atlas, much of his talk was centered around the cross-device, multi-touch attribution platform that doesn’t rely on cookies.

In a bold statement, Johnson said that cookies are “a terribly unreliable way to do marketing.”

Johnson encouraged those in attendance to focus on mobile first, while understanding just how important the web and mobile devices are to young consumers today. “For young people today, being connected is the most important thing in their lives,” he said. “If you talk to them, they’ll say that FOBO is their biggest fear – the fear of being offline.”

However, Johnson also made it clear in his talk that mobile is important to people beyond just those who are young, and he called it a “complicated landscape.” He cited third-party research to illustrate that 60 percent of consumers use at least two devices per day, and 40 percent begin their shopping on one device and finish on another.

Once these statistics were explained, Johnson described what he calls “the three challenges of mobile marketing”:

1. Many marketers say that only about 10 percent of their budgets are being spent on mobile, despite the rapid growth of its usage with consumers. Johnson stated that, in his opinion, this surprising statistic is due to the fact that “we’re using an outdated technology called the cookie.” Johnson further explained his view that cookies tend to overstate reach and understate the frequency of ads.

2. Consumers want to see better ads. Johnson explained that cookies average only 59 percent accuracy in demographic targeting, and that 21 percent of conversions aren’t captured due to the frequent use of multiple devices. “It’s a terribly unreliable way to do marketing,” he said. “We don’t know enough about the people we’re serving ads to.”

3. 94 percent of sales still happen offline. The challenge of this finding is that marketers need a method to show that their online marketing is actually converting people to purchase products offline. Johnson’s solution is for marketers to use the people-based marketing that is available via Facebook’s Atlas platform.

Certainly, as the Head of Atlas, Johnson may be heavily biased when making these statements. However, it is generally agreed that mobile marketing is a complicated venture, and his talk brings up many valid points that are worthy of further discussion and analysis.