“The end is near,” says Scott Brinker, VP of Ecosystems at HubSpot.

It’s hard to believe a time when you couldn’t go to a website, put items in your cart, flip through multiple pages, and come back to the same cart you left. But just two decades ago, that wasn’t possible.

Cookies began as a tool to enhance the experience of the internet. Since then, they’ve become embroiled in controversy.

So what does a world look like without third-party data?

Scott Brinker and Juan Mendoza took to boldly answer this question in a three-part series of Big Martech.

Keep the end in mind

In the second episode, Scott pointed out,

“I think some confusion between the means and the end. The end that we’re looking to achieve here is this: How do we engage the right audiences in a meaningful way that builds our relationship as a brand with our customers? I think we’ve gotten a little bit hooked on a particular means by which we do that.”

Third-party data is one means by which we use to engage the right audiences and provide the best experiences.

Now it falls to first-party and second-party data to provide what third-party data used to provide.

We’ve gotta fill a gap

Companies will use Nearbound to fill the gap left by third-party data.

In the case of advertising,

"All of these companies that weren’t traditionally ad networks are now ad networks because Google’s control over the ad-tech economy has weakened because 3rd party cookies are going away."— Juan Mendoza

For example, Netflix is partnering with Microsoft – Netflix is able to offer a lower-cost tier, and Microsoft serves ads to those Netflix customers.

The contextual, Nearbound future

Given the current convergence of three important factors – legal regulations, technological advances, and the importance of brand – Scott and Juan believe that the future is contextual.

You’ll be able to use,

“the immediate context of a user to serve them [something] that is relevant and helpful.”— Juan Mendoza

Imagine a world where we market and sell contextually, at scale. Where each individual company gets to talk directly to one user about something that’s specifically relevant to him/her.

Check out the full three-part podcast series: part one, part two, and part three.

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