Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn
There are generally four ways to respond to stress: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Most are familiar with fight or flight. Their names are fairly self-explanatory. However, here’s a little description of each [1]:
Fight is when your body prepares to confront the presented threat. This can come out as rage, anger, confrontation, or high energy.
Flight is when your body prepares to escape or run away from the presented threat. This can present as anxiety, panic, avoidance, or high energy.
Freeze is when your body prepares to shut down in response to the presented threat. This can come out as dissociation, numbness, shutdown, or low energy.
Fawn is when your body sees the only way out as appeasing the threat. This can present as people-pleasing, codependency, or a lack of boundaries.
Changes in AdTech = Stressful
Now, you might be wondering, “Gee, Ava, what does this have to do with AdTech?”
Stress can be induced by many different factors and can be subjective. [2] As CPO Amol Waishampayan mentions in his article, “Take Back Your Data Control,” we all feel like we’re spinning out of control, due to many events throughout the last few years.
Everyone has heard of the cookiepocalypse by now. For those whose jobs rely on cookies, they are likely stressed. Although cookies aren’t fully deprecated, Google’s third-party cookie time must come to an end. Marketers would be better off phasing cookies out completely, before the countdown is up.
So, just like responses to stress in our everyday lives, how we respond to changes in our jobs and within our industries is very important. Given that we all come from such unique backgrounds, how we handle the cookiepocalypse will vary from company to company and even from decision-maker to decision-maker.
How Is Your Business Responding?
Fight
Some businesses we chat with, we’re finding that they’re hastily pivoting (or fighting) as a response. They are actively seeking out solutions to mirror cookies. For example, universal IDs are valuable; however, you can’t build your whole strategy on them, since they are not ubiquitous in the ecosystem yet, like cookies were.
Additionally, cookies are an issue. They are untimely, inaccurate due to their untimeliness, and expensive. Why look for a similar solution that is ultimately going to be an issue?
Flight
Agencies, brands, media companies, and publishers who use the flight method will seriously struggle in the coming years. To maintain marketing and advertising efforts, change is vital. Running away by staying away from digital audiences won’t work. Working with your previous customer information and those visiting your brick-and-mortar stores won’t help your business survive and thrive as shopping moves more online and virtual. [3]
The truth of the matter is that the best way to survive the cookiepocalypse is to find a platform that doesn’t rely on cookies, IP addresses, MAID/GAIDs, or other outdated technologies and provides you first-party data while respecting your visitors' privacy.
Fawn
If you’re a business that fawns, you’re likely anticipating using third-party data within the walled gardens and solely relying on these walled gardens. The sad news is that it’s not truly attainable. Their data lives within their instances and will never truly belong to you.
Freeze
With most of the companies we speak with daily, we’re finding their response is to freeze. Some businesses really feel as though this isn’t an issue for them.
Rather than act and prepare for the oncoming changes, they’d rather wait to see if Google extends their date of demise. Of course, Google did, but this doesn’t mean Google can continue kicking the can down the road for much longer. Businesses will have to enact changes, due to data privacy legislation.
The New F: Future-Proof!
Our solution at FullThrottle is none of these. We don’t fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Instead, we future-proofed and continue to future-proof our clients. Regardless of what happens to cookies, we aren’t stressed, since we never relied on them. The cookiepocalypse is a regular ol’ Tuesday for us.
No matter the outcome of cookie deprecation, we’re set to win––and so are our clients. We are supplying armory to everyone.
You, too, can kick cookies to the curb. Schedule your demo today to discover how.
