How Sky & Permutive beat the limitations of third-party cookies to reach 100% of consumers

Sky’s current buying from its DSP relies heavily on third-party cookies. Permutive enabled Sky to surpass the limitations of traditional third-party cookies by leveraging and modelling publisher cohorts to reach 100% of consumers, unlocking a vast and untapped audience pool beyond the confines of legacy advertising technology.

Acting ahead of the curve, rather than waiting for industry adoption of IDs and/or other cookieless proposals, Sky took destiny into its own hands and adopted Permutive’s technology. The technology allows Sky to access its target audiences via a modelled cohort approach - not limited by scale - across the open web. This removes bias within the buying models present today, which are skewing toward cookied browsers.

Permutive is built into the infrastructure of 150 premium publishers globally and built on patented edge technology, providing a future-proofed programmatic targeting solution for innovative brands like Sky.

The objectives

Sky and Permutive created an ambitious geo-lift incrementality study that pits cookie-based lookalike audiences against modelled publisher cohorts across Broadband, Mobile, and TV.

The objectives for the study and implementation of Permutive’s technology were:

To mitigate performance loss in a cookieless future.

Maintaining the effectiveness of leveraging publisher first-party data consistent with today's third-party cookie approaches.

To evaluate whether cookieless targeting provides a cost-effective prospecting alternative compared to the current cookie-based approach.

Based on the insights gained from the test results, the study would be a key indicator of whether Sky would adopt a Permutive future-proof cookieless approach across all Sky products.

The approach

Permutive’s technology enables Sky to leverage publisher first-party data to build lookalike audiences and reach them across all environments via publisher cohorts instead of relying on cookies. Sky uses Permutive's functionality to utilise its first-party data to create modelled cohorts for activation.

The geo-lift incrementality study divided audiences into two test cells to test the cookieless approach to targeting. In each cell, Sky and Permutive compared the performance of cookie-based lookalike audiences with modelled cohorts based on publisher first-party data.

Publisher cohorts are consumers grouped together based on a shared characteristic within a publisher’s environment, built directly at the source by publishers. They offer a privacy-forward approach to targeting because they are based on first-party data and don’t rely on tracking and identifying individuals. Therefore brands can target 100% of users, rather than the 30% available via third-party cookies or IDs.

In terms of measurement, Sky and Permutive focused on several key performance indicators (KPIs). Primary KPIs included total sales across all routes to market, reachability*, and delivery, assessed through linear media metrics. The study used a geo-lift incrementality test to keep it fair and consistent and ensure reliable results.

Various considerations were taken into account during the planning phase. These included utilizing existing trading assets across Broadband, TV, and Mobile products. Additionally, publisher cohorts were activated in an identical setup to the existing business as usual (BAU) display via the DSP. Both test cells were tasked with delivering against an approved selection of publishers, ensuring consistency and comparability across the board.

The results

The results outperformed the study's initial objective of mitigating performance loss in a cookieless future, maintaining effectiveness, and being consistent with today's third-party cookie approaches. Setting new standards for innovative uses of technology for a cookieless future.

Permutive results for Sky Mobile were approximately consistent across both October and February testing, despite running these tests during different seasonality periods (Q4 2023 and Q1 2024) and different levels of spend.

Cookieless prospecting significantly outperforms BAU, reachability* outperformed benchmark targets, hitting 84% for the campaign overall and outperforming the baseline audit scores by 179% overall. By increasing access to all audiences, Sky saw a 55% reduction in CPA and a 121% increase in sales attributed to media. Results for TV and Broadband show that cookieless prospecting is equally effective compared to BAU, making it a viable alternative to buying in a cookieless environment.

This award entry showcases the effectiveness of leveraging publisher first-party data and modelled publisher cohorts for cookieless prospecting and is now being rolled out across Sky’s media plans.

Kumar Amrendra, Head of Digital Marketing, Planning, and Data Science at Sky, said: “Permutive's technology has proven instrumental in revolutionizing our approach and protecting our business from the removal of cookies from the ecosystem, unlocking our reachability*, and mitigating any impact on performance. The results are incredible, and we are excited to roll out Permutive's cookieless solution across our media plans.”

*Reachability (%) measures how many users were reached as a proportion of the available users to reach, with or without an identifier or cookie, across the advertisers’ selection of publishers.

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