A cookie-less future is inevitable. What does that mean? First, what is a cookie? It is a tracker that tracks all of us on everything we visit on mobile and our computers, whether it is sites, social media, or search. This Cross-app tracking allows advertisers (companies with large ad budgets) to target ads based on behaviors on other sites and apps.

Apple’s new IOS update changing everything about how sites track users. And now requires a deliberate opt-in from users to permit software to track them across apps. 96% of iPhone users opted out of app tracking in the latest iOS 14.5 update.Google also announced that by the end of 2022 Chrome would no longer support third-party cookies. That means that now advertisers can only track one click per user. Facebook now META is an advertising company that collects data through their facebook pixel. Before FB could track multiple events of a user on a site. But now the tracking can only be on one event. So if a brand has the Facebook pixel to track page views, add to cart and purchases, to then use to retarget customers, the brand will only be able to report 1 event. Either purchases or add to cart, not both.

SMBs were already impacted prior to the new privacy updates. Only 2% of brands own the first page of their search results and customers don't go past page 1 on google. Yet, search advertising is the most successful form of converting consumers. So for an SMB your brand or website is not getting found in search and you are left to social media for advertising and acquisition. And the new privacy update impacts paid ads on instagram getting found, but organic content on social media will also become more challenging. The majority of consumers live in the explore section of instagram. There are 95 million posts made every day, If customers are not directly searching for what you sell, and your ads won't be able to directly target an audience, your chances of your posts being found by new followers, is very small.

Only single platforms win in the future of ecommerce. At City Shoppe, we don't rank products based off of ad spend like Amazon. Instead we work together with our partners like you, and we build customer profiles based on what they are shopping for. For example, as a user uses our site and clicks on women owned, a specific city, specific categories or brand values, we build a custom profile for them. And then create emails of products and brands based on that interest. So the consumer gets personalized content sent to them, and your brand gets in front of hyper-targeted customers.