When cookies crumble: How to personalise online gambling in light of the third-party cookie ban

For online casinos and gambling companies, tracking website visitors is a crucial part of their marketing strategies to understand visitor habits and personalise services and advertisements. However, the rising privacy concerns prompted by the EU’s GDPR and resulting third-party cookie ban present the online gambling market with quite a challenge of how to deliver high levels of customisation and monetise their offerings.

The death of third-party cookies

While Safari and Firefox have already killed third-party cookies, Google Chrome has recently made a decision to delay its ban to 2023. That means online gambling sites have won more time to find other ways to optimise their web visitor interactions and gain visibility into online customer behaviour. The use of first-party cookies for their own domains will still be possible, however, companies need to adopt smart new solutions that maximise the value of website-visit data.

Google’s recent analysis of the 500 largest Google Ad Manager publishers globally found that where no cookie was present, revenues plummeted by an average of 52% compared to traffic with cookies. In light of this shocking statistic, online gambling companies and casinos should act now instead of celebrating the ban delay prematurely.

As each browser operator has its own interpretation of how to deal with third-party cookies and privacy, compliance becomes a complicated matter. Where cookies have been found to compromise user privacy, most browser companies are restricting storage access. However, Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention uses multiple methods to restrict storage access for third parties algorithmically classified as having cross-site tracking capabilities.

The truth is the death of third-party cookies is near whether browser operators interpret the ban in the same way or differently. Keywords and SEO-optimised content will become the main tactics as web-wide behaviour-tracking becomes much harder and first-party cookies take on the responsibility for tracking. Online gambling sites and casinos need to balance quality of service and ensure user privacy by adopting a more innovative approach to behaviour analysis, segmentation and personalisation.

Utilising the power of data for AI-powered personalisation

AI and emerging technologies are making it possible to leverage consumer data from website visits, providing online casinos with a far more sophisticated and profitable way of interacting with their audience. By storing only the unique ID of the user in a first-party cookie, each visit can be logged without using any other information. With this data, online gambling companies can understand individual visitor’s behaviour, personalise their interaction, and suggest a relevant game or advertisement based on their activity. Harnessing the power of AI also means that visitors will not be bombarded with obtrusive and irrelevant advertisements that appear at the worst possible point of experience.

Adopting a single platform approach

By adopting a single platform, organisations can use the data and analysis to personalise marketing content across multiple channels, delivering far better results through precise targeting. A single platform is efficient, easy-to-implement, and most importantly, leveraging it avoids the need for different solutions to be brought together for different stages of the customer journey.

When Google implements its third-party cookie ban, the focus will be on utilising first-party cookie data from consumer website visits. Online gambling sites need to ensure that the service users receive across laptops, smartphones and tablets remains of high quality. The real-time understanding of the data being processed thanks to AI technology can also help ensure compliance with data protection legislation, such as the GDPR and California Consumer Privacy Act, enabling confident strides when third-party cookies are no more.

Andy McNab is an award-winning digital leader that has led teams at Microsoft, AOL and Rocket Fuel and is now fully focused on developing Fanplayr across EMEA.