Anjali Bhatnagar started Tørn to make use of hardware overstock, Anton Assarsson creates real value for advertisers and Therese Cappelen is rethinking periods. Get to know some of our people.

From trash to bargain

Did you know that in Norway alone, building materials with a market value of four billion NOK end up in long term storage and ultimately get thrown away? The situation is similar across Scandinavia.

We’re talking about fully functional goods and tools that have been replaced by newer models or were in stock only for a season. When Anjali Bhatnagar heard about this, she knew that it would be her next project. After shutting down a previous project – a marketplace for second-hand fashion, which didn’t fly, she already had a platform and contact with investors, Schibsted being one.

“I realized there are buyers who would be very interested in these supplies, but the stores do not have access to them.”

That’s how Tørn was born, a marketplace for hardware overstock, where you can buy everything from nails to floors and bathroom equipment for a really nice price, and at the same time save the planet from some unnecessary waste. But the key to success is convenience.

“Tørn makes it easier for the stores to sell rather than throw away the goods”, explains Anjali.

“It’s very simple for the sellers to automatically get their goods up on our platform. In return, they get ready orders and even a shipping label from Tørn. We deal with the payment and everything else.”

So far, Tørn has been off to a good start. In only a year, 120 stores have come onboard and another 250 are on their way in Norway – and next year a pilot will be launched in Sweden.

“I have worked with both technology and user centred design in the past, and I strongly believe that both disciplines are relevant tools to create commercially successful and sustainable solutions for real problems.”

Anjali Bhatnagar
CEO and Founder Tørn
Schibsted invested: May 2021

“I really enjoy the creative process”

In 2021, more than 400 million Swedish krona was spent on native advertising in Sweden. There’s no question that a good story is valuable. Anton Assarsson is Head of Editorial for Tailor Made Solutions in Schibsted’s Brand Studio in Stockholm, and he knows that the market has even greater potential to grow.

“Advertisers from all around the world see the potential in getting their message across in a storytelling-fashion on Schibsted’s platforms. And they understand that the readers and viewers appreciate it.”

The key to a successful campaign for him and his team is to take an editorial approach when creating content, and Anton, a former journalist, knows how to do just that.

“I really enjoy the creative process and that I get to use my experience as a journalist to create value for our customers.”
He emphasises that the distinction between commercial and editorial content is critical – and that it should always be obvious to the users that what they are reading is advertising.

“But what is great is that if the storytelling and content are good enough – the readers will choose it, and appreciate it, regardless.”

Anton Assarsson
Head of Editorial, Schibsted Tailor Made Solutions
Years in Schibsted: 8

Syd is rethinking periods

It all started with an interest in how companies can make a difference. Now Syd offers subscriptions for organic tampons and pads – and support to girls on the Ivory Cost.

“I was tired of menstrual products brands being stuck in the past. No one seemed to care about the whole experience,” says Therese Cappelen, one of three founders behind Syd.

A starting point was when she met her co-founders, Adriano Sannelli and Christian Nordenborg. They shared the belief that businesses should also do good.
So, when you subscribe to Syd’s products, you are supporting girls on the Ivory Cost. For every product sold, a percentage of the profit is donated to make sure that they have access to safe toilets with running water and period care. Syd is cooperating with Save the Children to build toilet facilities at six schools in the country.

As a designer, Therese reacted to the excessively pink packaging and branding of menstrual products, which are often decorated with flowers and animal prints. Syd’s blood red and the letters in its name are placed to symbolize a vagina.

“Periods are still associated with a sense of shame and hush-hush. We want to change that,” says Therese.

Therese Cappelen
Co-founder Syd
Schibsted invested: September 2021

For years Schibsted has been the hidden parent company behind a portfolio of some of the most appreciated companies in the Nordics. Today, Schibsted, a brand that has existed for over 180 years, is also growing into an identity of its own.

Schibsted’s history goes back all the way to 1839 and Christian Schibsted’s printing business. Ever since it’s been a story of transformation, entrepreneurship and carrying the torch for independent media and freedom of speech.

But although it’s a strong and compelling story, it’s not very well-known – for a long time Schibsted has been an unknown owner behind a portfolio of some of the strongest brands in the Nordics. It has always been, and still is, our brands that should shine the brightest. However, the need for a stronger parent brand has gradually risen.

We are becoming consumer-facing

There are many reasons for this. Employer branding and the war for talent requires a clear identity. How do we attract the best people if they don’t know who we are and what we aspire to be?

Promising startups and companies that Schibsted would like to invest in, will want a partner they understand, respect and believe they can build a long-term relationship with.

And, Schibsted is also becoming a consumer-facing brand of its own, with our login and identity service Schibsted account. Owning the data of customers interacting with our companies, also means the need to build trust in Schibsted. And trust demands a certain level of knowledge and understanding of who we are.

That said, in order to build a strong brand, you need to have the right tools in place, and understand that strategy and branding are two sides of the same coin. That’s why, in the spring of 2021, we launched our overarching strategy and identity, Schibsted Future State. This defines what Schibsted is and should aim to be, what sets us apart as a company and why we exist. It’s what we want Schibsted to be, in the hearts and minds of people connecting with us.

Our three main pillars

These are the three main pillars explaining who we are – our mission, our vision and our character:

What do we do? Empower people in their daily lives.
Why do we do it? To uphold a society built on trust and transparency.
How do we do it? As a fearless force for change.

To express what is true and important all across Schibsted we have also created a set of uniting principles. They say something about how we approach business across our family of brands and how we work together. Not every principle will seem relevant all the time, but they set the standard Schibsted brands should aspire to, and codes of conduct that no brand strategy or value should violate.

• We take leading positions
• We create exceptional user value by sharing data and capabilities
• We champion a responsible internet
• We are more than the sum of our parts
• We think big and long term
• We know the power of local.
• We are accountable
• We are entrepreneurial

 A family story

Schibsted Future State does not replace our brands’ individual mission, strategy or value. Rather, it serves to complement them. However, it says something about our family, the history and legacy that connect us, and the future we want to create together. What we do want, is for people to understand Schibsted as the parent that orchestrates our family of brands.

It is our ambition, though it may take some time, that most people working in Schibsted will easily be able to sum up what our strategy is. When all our business decisions are aligned with our strategy, when there’s a clear coherency and consistency in how we tell our story to everyone out there; from potential employees, to customers travelling through our digital services and channels that’s when people can start to really evaluate how loveable Schibsted as a brand really is.

The marketing discipline has, of late, been obsessed with short-term performance marketing. It seems that many of us have forgotten the true value of being a brand that people really love. Hanne Hollstedt, Head of Marketing in Schibsted Ventures Norway, is seeing signs of change.

Today, many companies are almost blinded by the urge to gather enough data. It’s all about hitting that exact moment when your customers make a purchase decision – all to reach a certain sales target. Yes, of course tracking, gathering and analysis of data is important. But what happened to building a brand that customers want to buy in the first place?

A common definition of a brand is “a name with the power to influence”, according to reputed brand expert Jean-Noël Kapferer. But creating a brand that evokes love and trust, as well as the power to influence, is rarely at the centre of strategic discussions.

A gut feeling

All too often, brand strategy is left to the marketing team, and the marketing team is measured on short-term conversions. The strategic discussion centres around product, people, technology and KPIs related to revenue growth and costs. It’s tangible and easy to measure.

Honestly, if you ask yourself whether a financially strong competitor would be able to copy your product, technology, people or customer journey, the answer will in most cases be “yes”. But if you ask the same question about your company’s name or brand, and you can answer “no”, then you know you’ve got a winner.

One of a company’s most important assets is the space they occupy in people’s minds; the gut feeling and willingness to pay that they immediately stimulate –and the possibilities their name gives for future growth and opportunities. The sum of all choices that tip things in your favour – now that’s your brand making a difference.

Finn.no is by far the most popular marketplace in Norway, behind which is a large pool of talented developers, sales personnel and product owners. Finn has developed a strong company culture and substantial financial resources. However, all these assets could be copied, in one way or another.

Essentially, there is not a single unique element that you can’t copy or recreate.

However, try to occupy the same space in the heads of the Norwegians that the Finn brand does. That’s hard …really hard. That’s what’s called the performance of the brand.

The short-termism is to blame

So why isn’t the brand a central part of the strategy in all companies?

I think today’s short-termism is partly to blame, but also that the idea of brand is so complicated. To quote Jeremy Bullmore: “Brands are fiendishly complicated, elusive, slippery, half-real, half-virtual things. When CEOs try to think about brands, their brains hurt.”

From an investor perspective, the value of a company is not just the tech stack, production sites or current customer base.It’s whether they have a name with the power to influence future growth. This value lies in the brand. A well-used example, but nevertheless one of the world’s best, is “The Company that shall not be mentioned” who sells 15 percent of all devices in the smartphone category but keeps 66 percent of the global profit pool. No competitor has yet been able to take more than a tiny bite of that apple.

As for marketing, if you need to be right in front of people’s faces to be remembered and chosen, that represents a consistent and high cost. It’s like being trapped in a hamster wheel. Building a brand, on the other hand, is a sustainable, long-term investment.

Recent research shows a not surprising correlation between share of brand searches in a category and the brand’s market share (Les Binet 2020). This means that you also must focus on what triggers customers to search for your specific brand in the first place, rather than put all your focus on the generic searches in your category.

The future winners will be the ones who are able to create a name that increases the chances of customers choosing you over the competition, attracting more customers, at a lower cost, who are happy to pay a little extra for you. They will deliver more revenue, profit, and growth, more efficiently, and ultimately, generate more shareholder value.

The value proposition is crucial

The start-ups that we in Schibsted Ventures meet obviously don’t represent strong brands…yet. They are simply too immature. However, it is possible to identify companies that might have the potential to become powerful brands.

I would argue that start-ups that have a clear value proposition and are able to articulate that through both internal actions and external communication have a head start on their journey to becoming a strong brand. If you know why the users and customers should choose, trust and maybe even love you, you have come a very long way.

This might seem simple and intuitive, but it’s not. Very often a company starts out with some kind of solution that they more or less accidentally developed, without a clear vision of the actual value proposition. That might turn out well, but it also might result in blinding frustration no matter how advanced or clever your performance marketing strategies.

If you take a step back and try to figure out the essence of the market that your start-up is targeting, and what the actual drivers and barriers are, then you have taken the first step to creating a brand that makes a difference – a brand that is your performance.

With more than two million shows and in excess of 48 million episodes online (as of April 2021), podcasts are still growing in popularity. The global pandemic also gave rise to a new trend in the audio space: social audio.

Everyone from major publishers to smaller creators are creating podcasts, and the topics are as varied as their hosts. While it’s difficult to find statistics for podcast listening globally, more than 60 percent of American adults from age 18 to 34 listen to podcasts monthly. It’s projected to be a 1 billion USD industry by the end of this year.

Social audio

Still, there’s an even newer phenomenon that has emerged on the audio scene in the last year or so. It’s called social audio. It started when Clubhouse hit the scene in 2020, and it gained a lot of traction as the Covid-19 pandemic had people all over the world sitting at home, starved for human connection. The Clubhouse app was, at the time, invitation-only, growing slowly but steadily over time. But in the wake of its rising popularity, other platforms saw an opportunity.

Platforms that already had significant audiences, such as Twitter, Facebook and Spotify, threw their hats into the ring and created their own versions of places for people to connect via audio. Even Amazon is reportedly creating a live audio business. In gaming, voice chat has been huge for decades, allowing players to talk in-game, and that phenomenon has been extended to external platforms like Discord, which has become more of an all-around voice chat and streaming platform.

As to why audio has become so popular across channels, tech analyst and investor Jeremiah Owyang describes it as a Goldilocks medium. “It’s not as impersonal as text but also not as invasive as video — something particularly important for the Zoom-fatigued user”, he says. There’s also a case to be made for audio as a more human and authentic medium.

Important source of income

For publishers and advertisers, the growing audio space has a lot to offer. Subscription-based products have become some of the most important sources of revenue for publishers, whether paid for by users or advertisers. Audio can also be a way to create stronger connections with your audience and to humanise your brand.

As social audio and, perhaps most notably, podcasts grow, advertisers will follow suit. Global podcast ad spend is predicted to double, reaching 1.6 billion USD in 2022, according to a study by the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC). Another study, the Super Listeners 2021 report by Edison Research, shows that podcast advertisements are the most recalled type of ad, with 86 percent of respondents saying they remember seeing or hearing an ad.

For Schibsted, podcasts are an important part of its core business, as shown by the company’s increased stake in the podcast company Podme. The audio space is especially important in the Nordics, with Sweden being one of the world leaders in podcast listening, according to the German market and consumer data firm Statista. The Nordics have a long history of qualitative audio media, with global tech giants, including Spotify and Acast, originating in Sweden.

Although the audio climate was disrupted at the start of the pandemic, especially with podcasting being a favoured commuting pastime, it didn’t take the expected downturn, but instead came out of the crisis on top. And for everyone from listeners to publishers and marketers, it looks like it’ll keep on climbing.

The pandemic has permanently changed how we shop, bringing e-commerce firmly into the mainstream. Retail behaviours that started as a Covid-19 necessity will continue even after the long-awaited return to “normalcy”.

The simple explanation for this shift is that convenience always wins, and the pandemic awakened shoppers to a world of seamless deliveries and curb side pick-ups from their favourite big-box retailers. Beyond that, the evolution of shopping has also opened the door for consumers to trade traditional brand loyalties in exchange for the best price, the most eco-friendly or the most socially conscious.

“You’re not going to see a full rollback when it comes to e-commerce penetration”, says Hana Abaza, Shopify Plus’ Global Director of Marketing.

“Some people will actually shift into buying certain things online, and they’ll keep doing it.”

A fierce fight

Given that there’s no going back, let’s look ahead and focus on how e-commerce will continue evolving into a more interactive, virtual and data-driven experience for shoppers, with an emphasis on mobile and social. Driving that innovation in e-commerce is a playing field more competitive than ever. Online customers have quickly flocked to the retailers who could offer a best-in-class user experiences, fluid logistics or frictionless payments. While market leaders such as Amazon continue to shift billions in gross merchandise value (GMV), the fight for a share of the customer wallet remains fierce among the long tail of both old and new players in the online shopping space.

In September 2021, the mobile analytics firm App Annie concluded that the pandemic accelerated e-commerce growth by ten years. Mobile shopping activity spiked worldwide in 2020, and the amount of time spent in shopping apps grew by almost 50 percent. Better mobile experiences have also led to bigger shopping carts, with the average mobile shopping spend rising by 22 percent to 78 USD. Mobile-first retailers are continually rolling out tactics to keep consumers in the app longer, such as games and other interactive elements like chatbots, wish lists and stories.

So, why do we see this defining the next generation of online commerce? Mobile penetration rates are continuing to grow, particularly in previously underdeveloped regions including South America and Southeast Asia. To note: Indonesia experienced an 87 percent rise in mobile shopping activity, the largest of any country in App Annie’s report. Secondly, Gen Z’s rise as an economic engine will continue to power mobile commerce. After all, this is a generation where 95 percent own a smartphone and are willing to pay a premium for uniqueness and sustainability.

A way to convert sales

As e-commerce develops in the 2020s, retailers will figure out a way to better replicate and refine the in-store experience. What started as a necessity often driven by social distancing limitations has now become a way to convert sales of even high touch items like automobiles, as customers can avoid a trip to the shop or showroom. Whether it’s virtual fitting rooms or expanded augmented reality, “try before you buy”-tech is one step towards combining the physical and virtual. Customers want to know how that sofa table looks in their living room, or whether the luxury bag matches the rest of their wardrobe. Part of that is also driven by retailers’ needs to save on expensive returns – which could have a considerable climate impact as well.

Online retailers have also made great strides in providing a more personalised space for shoppers. Search-led shopping is on the way out, as the focus shifts to directing users toward custom product recommendations. Discovery shopping appeals to the customer base who don’t know what they want. Alibaba has perfected the art of qiān rén qiān miàn (千人千面, which translates to “a thousand people, a thousand faces”), which displays personal storefronts and treats retail like content, complete with an infinite-scroll option much like you see on social media. It has the same effect as the “bottomless bowl”, a psychological experiment that led to respondents eating 73 percent more soup from their endless serving. Just like social media feeds, these recommendations are built on huge tranches of data and ever-evolving AI technology to make them more relevant, more compelling and more able to convert to a sale.

A November 2020 survey by Bazaar voice revealed that more than one in three shoppers made a purchase on social media last year. While Facebook is the leader with its established Marketplace, Instagram and TikTok have ramped up the integration of shopping into their user experiences, both through paid ads as well as by highlighting shoppable products in user-generated content. Just as word of mouth or a friend’s recommendation can push you to make a purchase offline, consumers too can be compelled by seeing the products bought by their online social connections. Unsurprisingly, influencers who make their living on social media platforms are among the first to partner with brands for more integrated social shopping content.

With all the competition from mobile-focused and “bricks and clicks”, the one area where retailers can’t afford to slip up is at checkout. Few things are more frustrating for retailers than pulling a customer all the way through the sales funnel, only to lose them due to friction at the point of payment. To reduce hassle, some retailers have even done away with carts and let customers buy directly from the product page.

Remove friction is key

The key is to remove friction. That’s why we’ll see one-tap checkouts become the norm in e-commerce, supported by “buy now, pay later” plans. Those flexible payment plans, popularised by Sweden’s Klarna, have, over the course of the pandemic, reshaped how we pay for purchases. So much so that a recent McKinsey survey revealed that 60 percent of respondents planned to use some sort of financing option at purchase within the next twelve months.

Live commerce has been a staple of online retail in China ever since Alibaba first debuted the technology in 2016 at Taobao Live. Jumping ahead to 2020, McKinsey reported that more than two-thirds of Chinese shoppers had purchased a product via livestream. Even with the country’s signature shopping event – Singles Day – setting records in terms of sales (115 billion USD in 2020), livestreaming remained a mystery to Westerners. The pandemic changed that, as first-movers saw live commerce to be a low-risk bet to differentiate themselves. Bigger players such as Amazon and Walmart weren’t far behind, and social media followed in lockstep, with Facebook launching Instagram Live as part of its strategic pivot to more shoppable content.

Brands have figured out that live commerce helps blur the line between shopping and entertainment, an important factor for success in tomorrow’s marketplace. With influencers performing for their audiences, demonstrating products and fielding questions, buyers can rediscover the human interaction that went missing during the pandemic.

Thanks to their expansive assortments, refined logistics and ability to collect comprehensive customer data, the mega online retailers will have a decided advantage in the online marketplaces of tomorrow. The same goes for those nimbler operations that lean heavily into mobile, social, and niche communities. Yet, as significant as the trend toward e-commerce has been, it’s still relatively early in its evolution, with plenty of market share yet to be claimed across industries.

Technology and disruptive marketplaces will play a key role in building a more sustainable future. But sustainability still isn’t the main driver for users to change behaviour – convenience and competitive prices remain crucial, says Christian Horn Hanssen, Lead Investment Manager at Schibsted Ventures.

According to latest projections from the UN, the global population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, and 9.7 billion in 2050. That means that the equivalent of almost three planets are potentially needed to provide the necessary natural resources to sustain our current lifestyles.

Furthermore, the UN’s Inter govern mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report in August 2021, stating that “human activity is changing the climate in unprecedented and sometimes irreversible ways”. It has never been clearer that we need to change on multiple levels to build a more sustainable future. This will require a huge effort from both businesses and consumers alike, but at the same time, it will also create enormous opportunities for those who manage to act and adapt.

This is how the UN explains what it’s all about: “Sustainable consumption and production are about doing more and better with less. It is about decoupling economic growth from degradation, increasing resource efficiency, and promoting sustainable lifestyles, which in turn could contribute to poverty alleviation and aid the transition towards low-carbon and green economies.”

Tech is a driving force

To achieve this, it’s worth exploring how technology and disruptive marketplaces can serve as driving forces. Over the past two decades we have seen the emergence of disruptive marketplaces and platforms. We have witnessed the television industry being disrupted by Youtube; the traditional hospitality industry being strongly challenged by Airbnb; and physical commerce being threatened by e-commerce, in particular by Amazon, which made it easy for non-technical people to operate their own online stores.

For a marketplace or platform to be disruptive, it must identify either new supply, new demand, or both – targeting individuals or businesses unable to profitably produce or consume goods and services in incumbent channels. The most powerful disruptive marketplaces are often those that simultaneously connect non-consumers with non-producers. Airbnb exemplifies this, case in point when it unlocked people’s homes (non-producers) ten years ago to a new set of users (non-consumers). The result is that we now see a new generation of niche, disruptive marketplaces continually emerging, ones that are focused on increasing resource efficiency and promoting sustainable lifestyles.

The fast growing American company Hipcamp is a great example of this. Hipcamp was founded in San Francisco in 2013. It is an online marketplace that offers outdoor stays and camping experiences via its website and mobile app. Private landowners, for the most part, list campsites, glamp sites, RV spaces as well as cabins, for users to discover and reserve based on listing type, location, landscape, activities offered and amenities. Hipcamp’s mission is to unlock access to private land, creating new places for people to experience the great outdoors and camp, much in the same way Airbnb did. Not only does its marketplace drastically increase the supply, but it also lowers the threshold for booking an outdoor stay for those who previously did not consider this to be a holiday option at all.

Glamping has gone from being niche to mainstream, driven by consumers who seek safe, local holiday experiences.

Hipcamp has, not surprisingly, experienced a surge in bookings during Covid-19. Glamping has gone from being niche to mainstream, driven by consumers who seek safe, local holiday experiences, which has slowly changed user habits. Even though few believe that Hipcamp will be a substitute to the traditional hospitality industry, many believe it will play a central role in offering a sustainable way to spend your holiday – unlocking new, local destinations that may lead to less long-distance travel.

New disruptive models are also challenging our ways when it comes to clothing. The textile industry is the world’s second-worst polluter, both in terms of production and waste. The EU estimates that a staggering 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by the production of clothing and footwear. One of the biggest problems is the vast overproduction and amount of unsold goods. New York based Rent the Runway (RTR) has set out to solve this problem. Founded in 2009, RTR allows customers (mostly Gen Z) to rent clothes and purchase second-hand merchandise from more than 750 designer brands.

Preventing supply from being burnt

In creating a niche, rental marketplace, RTR has built a platform in which brands’ unsold items can be worn by multiple customers over time, increasing longevity but also preventing some of the overproduction supply from being burned.

On top of all that, it is slowly changing user behaviours. RTR reports that 89 percent of its members say they buy fewer clothes than they did before joining RTR, and that 83 percent have consumed less “fast fashion” since joining. The fashion rental market is now projected to be valued at two billion USD by 2025, and rumour has it that RTR will be going public within 2021.

In 2019, Schibsted Ventures invested in Bookis, a fast-growing Norwegian marketplace for new and used books. Bookis has grown into the largest online bookstore in Norway, with almost 300,000 users and more than one million titles. Much of its success can be attributed to lowering the threshold for buying and selling used books by making it very easy for users to upload books for sale and integrating payments and logistics (a nimble C2C solution) through its platform. This has led to the creation of a whole new market: the “almost new, slightly used” (typically read once) book market.

By creating an effective way of buying used books (convenience) and enabling readers to also purchase newly published but slightly used books at a 40 percent discount, readers are incentivised to buy from Bookis rather than buy new. By offering royalties to authors for every second-hand transaction, it also gains their support. The ultimate effect being that it creates a new, disruptive marketplace with demand from what used to be non-producers – people with a library at home – with the supply of what used to be non-consumers – people who usually didn’t buy new, hardcover books but rather waited for the paperback edition or went to the public library (Read more about Bookis on pages 102–105).

Superior convenience is a must

I truly believe that disruptive marketplaces can be a driving force in building a more sustainable future, but as with ordinary marketplaces, there are some key elements that need to be in place to change user behaviour. New disruptive marketplaces must deliver superior convenience and be competitive on price. Studies have shown that even though people are more aware, sustainability alone is not a strong enough driver in itself for most users. For Bookis, it’s about the combination of convenience and price, not only the fact that it is a sustainable alternative.

It is also crucial to create a value proposition that satisfies both the demand and supply side of the marketplace. RTR creates a solution and an alternative business model for the overproduction of the clothing industry. In addition, it lowers the threshold for users to rent instead of buy new clothes by providing an attractive value proposition (price, convenience, new supply). The result is a win-win situation for both sides of the marketplace, and it has the potential to alter user and business behaviours over time.

I believe that the shift we are going through right now is a marathon, not a sprint. Changing user behaviour will take time and require multiple alterations. That’s why it is so important that we take part in driving these changes. Great opportunity awaits those who act and adapt today!

As privacy regulations and tech giants throw a spanner in third-party cookies’ advertising works, publishers seek new ways to monetise their content.

The cookie was born out of the mind of Netscape engineer Lou Montulli in 1994, as a tool to help websites remember user data. And cookies still perform this function to this day, allowing users to forget complicated passwords and what they put in their shopping cart the night before. However, it only took one year before Montulli’s creation was used for targeting and tracking users across the internet, much to the delight of the advertising world. Adtech firm Doubleclick was founded in 1995, quickly becoming the pioneers of ad targeting online. Google acquired the company in 2008, and the rest is history.

Big Tech in the lead

In recent years, users have become more aware of how companies are following their every click. Who hasn’t briefly entertained the thought of buying a new pair of shoes only to be followed by advertisements across platforms for the following month? The growing fear of what ad tracking means for online privacy has led lawmakers to pass legislation that protects users, Europe’s GDPR laws being a primary example. But most effective measure in terms of stopping the third-party cookies in their tracks has been the work of Big Tech.

While smaller browsers including Firefox and Safari blocked third-party cookies back in 2019 and 2020, respectively, it wasn’t until Apple and Google announced their intent to do so that the world of publishing and advertising quickly realised the need to change. While there is, of course, widespread skepticism about tech giants like Google and Apple having the mandate to enact changes that will disrupt entire industries, the change is already taking effect.

Apple has already started requiring its apps to request explicit consent to track users across devices. Google is working to create an alternative solution to ad tracking. What that alternative will look like is indeterminate at the time of writing. Google’s first plan was to implement FLOC (Federated Learning of Cohorts), which would assign opaque numerical cohort IDs to websites and people. After facing backlash from the advertising industry, Google’s looking into alternatives, such as assigning topic categories to users instead. But no matter the solution Google selects, the result will be more or less the same: publishers and advertisers will have to change the way they work.

Many different solutions will come

Some publishers have taken the matter into their own hands. In 2008, Schibsted launched its own first-party data program for direct-sold ads, a strategy New York Times also adopted in 2020. Vox Media launched Concert Ad Manager, a self-service tool enabling brands to create and deploy advertising campaigns across Concert, the publisher-led marketplace it co-founded in 2016. Other publishers have seen success in going back to older strategies like contextual advertising. Schibsted is one such publisher, as it will increase its focus on first-party data and contextual advertising.

Furthermore, Schibsted has launched Schibsted Match, a type of targeted advertising where advertisers can deliver customised messages directly to their customers on Schibsted’s websites.

We expect to see many different solutions contribute to the death of the cookie; some publishers will likely simply follow the lead of Google, while others will have more success in creating their own solutions. The past two years have also proved to many publishers that they will have more success by focusing on subscriptions rather than ads, even though subscription growth has plateaued somewhat following the surge during the pandemic. In the end, it’s the publishers who invest in diversifying their revenue streams who will most likely come out on top, no matter how the cookie-free future of advertising pans out.