Cookies are crumbling, and e-commerce brands aren’t waiting for crumbs to fall. They’re tapping first-party data now to stay alive.
Experts Say
Expert #1: Jeremy Goldman, eMarketer (Mar 4 2025)
Goldman reports that brands such as The New York Times, Disney, NBCUniversal, and McDonald’s are leaning heavily on first-party data to maintain personalization and ad performance after cookie deprecation. The Times saw its ad products perform 3–4× better, McDonald’s leveraged its 170 million loyalty members to drive meaningful interactions, and Disney integrated first-party profiles with broader identity systems like Bridge ID to maintain targeting scale theaustralian.com.au+15emarketer.com+15scaledon.com+15.
Expert #2: Eduardo Garcia & Stephanie Liu via Vogue Business (Jul 2024)
Garcia and Liu point to a shift towards privacy-forward marketing. They say marketers have built loyalty programs, quizzes, and preference centers, like those at beauty brands Shiseido or Sephora, to collect first‑ and zero-party data, which “offers a more accurate and contextually relevant view of customer behavior and preferences,” voguebusiness.com.
Our Take
E-commerce brands can’t cling to crumbs; they need the whole cookie jar. First-party data gives brands direct access to how customers shop, why they buy, and what they love. It’s not just compliance, it’s more precise targeting, stronger loyalty, and smarter attribution. The shift isn’t optional. It’s mandatory.
3 Action Steps
- Launch a loyalty-driven zero-party quiz flow
- Step 1: Add a simple “help us personalize your experience” quiz at signup (e.g., style preferences, usage habits)
- Step 2: Incentivize completion with loyalty points or early-access offers
- Step 3: Feed responses into your CRM/CDP for personalized email and homepage content
- Build server-side tracking + S2S conversion API
- Step 1: Use Google Tag Manager or native Shopify server-side tagging
- Step 2: Route purchase and browse data via Conversion API to Facebook/Meta and Google Ads
- Step 3: Monitor increased match rates and improved ROAS within 30 days
- Integrate first-party segments into ad platforms + lookalikes
- Step 1: Export opt-in email or loyalty segment (e.g., VIP buyers last 90 days)
- Step 2: Upload as a Custom Audience into platforms like Meta or Google Ads
- Step 3: Activate lookalike/lookalike+ contextual campaigns to expand reach efficiently
Survival means owning your data. First-party data is your core asset now, fueling smarter ads, deeper loyalty, and privacy-proof growth.
Written By Vanessa Manvelyan
