With third-party cookies finally on their way out, and signal loss still echoing from Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency, 2024 will be a challenging year for advertisers as their ability to target customers accurately and precisely gets more limited. These five charts will help marketers address data, targeting, and measurement concerns in the new year.

1. Many industries aren’t ready for the cookie to crumble

Most US industries still use cookies in the majority of their programmatic ad buying process, according to data from 33Across. Insurance is the outlier, with half of its buys coming from cookies and half coming from cookie alternatives.

Google’s third-party cookie deprecation will start in just a couple of weeks, which means these industries will need to reevaluate their ad buying process imminently.

2. First-party data is key to the post-cookie era

Among advertisers and publishers worldwide, activating their own first-party data holds the greatest promise for replacing cookie-dependent solutions, according to February 2023 DoubleVerify data. That said, no one solution was favored by more than 50% of advertisers or publishers, meaning the industry is split on what will replace cookies. Most will likely need to employ multiple strategies as these solutions gain momentum and adoption.

3. Marketers still use third-party cookies

One-fourth (25%) of US marketers and agencies most commonly used cookies in their transactions with media sellers in April 2023, according to Advertiser Perceptions. Proprietary identifiers like first-party data were used by less than a majority (43%) of US marketers and agencies in their transactions. US marketers will spend $10.4 billion on identity solutions and services this year, more than triple what they did in 2018, per the Winterberry Group.

4. Marketers have mixed confidence in measurement

Most marketers worldwide are either extremely or moderately confident in their ability to measure ROI across channels, according to April 2023 Nielsen data. But there’s still room for improvement, with more than 20% of marketers not confident in their ability to measure ROI across email, podcasts, and streaming audio.

Better measurement would unlock more ad spend across channels, but marketers are still scrambling to determine the best identity solutions.

5. B2B faces unique challenges

B2B marketers struggle to replace third-party data because they’re less likely to have their own data. As a result, B2B marketers need to invest in technology and resources to ensure compliant data storage, though their marketing data spend growth has slowed following a downturn in advertising, according to our August 2023 forecast.

Marketers must be strategic with their data investments, using help from third-party services or walled gardens to supplement their proprietary data.

This was originally featured in the eMarketer Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.