How e-commerce, social commerce, and influencer marketing connect in a cookieless world

For over two years, the world struggled and then adapted to Covid-19. In the marketing world, there was also a global struggle and adaptation that starts with a “C”: the Cookiepocalypse.

 

In ways, these are inextricably linked.

 

Covid-19 accelerated businesses’ digital transformation and consumers’ migration into the online world. For marketers, this online population boom was heaven-sent — more opportunities to reach a wider pool of target audiences in a way that had been tested and proven over the past decade: online advertising.

 

However, the vehicle which drove the currency that fuelled online advertising over the past decade was itself experiencing contractions, with advertisers, publishers and platform vendors alike scrambling for alternative means to power this currency.

 

At the same time, this acceleration to digital meant that businesses had to hastily put together disparate online sales channels and worry about stitching them together at a later date.

 

That time has come.

 

Businesses today have myriad customer touchpoints at various parts of the sales funnel that allow the measurement of marketing efforts and provide businesses with the opportunity to tap into the most relevant user segments.

 

It used to be easy to stitch all these touchpoints together with the use of third-party data, but with identifier deprecation across display and mobile driven by the demise of cookies and mobile privacy changes, how can we continue to accurately measure, attribute the impact, and then optimise marketing campaigns, especially on e-commerce?

 

Delivering conversions

 

Amid the resulting influx of identification and tracking solutions is a wider push towards deeper tracking and attribution for some of the more recent trends in the online commerce space. Think social commerce, conversational commerce, live commerce — and even influencer marketing.

 

As recent as two years ago, the influencer marketing space was plagued by claims that influencer marketing was difficult to attribute to sales and revenue, but that has changed.

 

Marketers are now running CPS influencer marketing campaigns and tech capabilities for influencer marketing have continued to advance. But where exactly are these campaigns being run?

 

AnyMind Group’s State of Influence in Asia 2021 report, which looked at data points on our influencer marketing platform, AnyTag, from 200,000+ influencers across 12 markets in Asia, highlighted that over 54% of influencers were on Facebook and/or Instagram — and for the year preceding September 2021, these platforms held the majority share of influencer marketing campaigns in Asia (a combined 64.61% of campaigns across social media platforms).

 

Couple this with social commerce and live commerce and we will start to see social media platforms become an even more central channel for brands around the world. That’s not to forget about other key online channels such as e-commerce marketplaces and “brand.com” sites (such as those created through platforms such as Shopify).

 

Okay, this space is getting messier. What’s next?

 

Enter Conversions API

 

Recently, Meta launched their Conversions API that sits server-side on your webstore and creates a direct connection with Meta’s tools.

 

Think better tracking across Meta’s properties, and now, your own webstore too. Conversions API allows data on events such as conversions, post-conversion events, and page visits on your store to be directly shared and linked to your Facebook business tools, whilst bypassing any need or reliance on third-party cookies.

 

Besides it being a solution for a post-2023 cookieless world with the API sitting server-side — as opposed to on your visitor’s browser — tracking capabilities and the all-important audience data needed to help optimise your efforts are not affected by ad-blockers or connectivity issues that may occur.

 

This allows you to continue receiving data more reliably and more accurately, allowing you to get insights into your customers, their journey, and conversion attribution, which help in the optimisation of campaigns for better ROAS. Yes, even influencer marketing!

 

When used together with Facebook’s pixel, marketers will be able to maximise the chances of registering conversions whilst lowering cost-per-action, with Facebook being able to deduplicate if two of the same events are registered. In more advanced setups, data from your store CRM can be added to increase match events amongst your targeted or retargeted segments, ultimately ensuring better conversions and sales.

 

With this, traffic to your site — whether driven through influencer marketing, online advertising, email market and more — can be tracked and attributed without the need for third-party cookies.

 

Implementing Conversions API

 

If your webstore already uses a platform like Shopify, this is available with just a few clicks of a button. Implementation is a straightforward affair by setting up Facebook as a sales channel to your webstore and enabling the Conversions API on it.

 

Besides Shopify, Meta also provides a full list of various partner integrations where the Conversions API can be easily implemented. For further configurability, it can also be manually implemented through some development work — allowing additional integration with offline, physical store purchases, customer chat data and more.

 

What’s more, using a platform such as AnyX enables you to easily manage all your online stores on a single dashboard, providing you with greater clarity and efficiency across your digital sales channels.

 

Entering the next-generation of commerce

 

Doing business online today is messy. The space will continue to get more fragmented, and marketers and businesses who do not start cleaning up now will drown in the barrage of customer touchpoints.

 

We are on the cusp of next-gen commerce — one powered by a new generation of tools that look to consolidate, demystify, and organise all aspects of a business.

 

This future will be one where data flows freely across the supply chain of a business and is used to power advanced automation and attribution, and one where doing business is exciting and borderless.

 

Are you ready?

 

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Purwa Jain is managing director of product growth across AnyMind Group’s products in the marketing and D2C spaces, enabling internal teams to create value for their customers through AnyMind's technology whilst providing valuable market insights and inputs to the product teams.

 

AnyMind Group is an end-to-end commerce enablement company with operations across Southeast Asia, East Asia, India, and the Middle East. With roots in the marketing tech space, the company has since evolved its platform suite to include not just digital and influencer marketing, but also publisher and creator monetisation, manufacturing, logistics, conversational commerce, and e-commerce — forming key infrastructure that powers the next-generation of commerce.