Like the deserts of Tatooine, advertisers could see two sunsets for important identifiers used to target audiences. The first, and most obvious, is for third-party cookies, which Google says will totally die. Maybe.

The second is the humble IP address: Though not going anywhere in the near future, major companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon have all taken measured swings at masking IP addresses, the series of digits that identify a particular device, like a laptop or iPhone, on the internet. Historically, advertisers have used IP addresses for geo-targeting and capping frequency.

You’re irreplaceable: While there are many different third-party cookie replacements in the works, including The Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0 and Google Topics, “there is no straight-up replacement for the IP address,” Anudit Vikram, chief product officer at ad-tech firm MediaMath, told us.

Here’s what we know so far about its demise:

• Apple: Last year, it announced two measures that cloak users’ IP addresses—one in Apple’s Mail app and another in what’s called iCloud Private Relay, which acts similarly to a virtual private network (VPN) and works on Safari. It’s a big deal, and it’s in line with Apple’s public stance on user privacy, detailed in a hilarious new spot that was released last month. At its Worldwide Developer Conference this week, marketers expect Apple to further its crackdown on IP-address access.
• Google: In January of 2021, it proposed something called Gnatcatcher (short for global network address translation combined…you get the idea), a combination of two other proposals that would hide a user’s IP addresses, in turn preventing identification.
• Amazon: In September, Ad Age reported that Amazon had been “quietly taking a page from the Apple playbook” by masking IP addresses when sharing ad campaign data on Freevee and Twitch.

IP ≠ ID

“The major companies are taking the exact same approach and speed as they did with cookies…I actually think it’s gone under the radar a little bit because there’s been so much noise about cookies,” said Wayne Blodwell, founder and CEO of digital marketing consulting firm TPA Digital.

Asking audiences whether they want “more relevant ads” has become a watered-down industry talking point—and can often be used to wave off privacy concerns, for example—but considering IP addresses are often used for geo-targeting, Blodwell said they can help make local advertising more useful and accurate. “It’s really important to maintain that just for relevance and user experience.”

Keep reading here.—RB

During her freshman year at Boston College, Madison Semarjian found herself in a predicament that many 18-year-olds find themselves in: not knowing what to wear on a first date.

She turned to her best friend, whose advice was, “Why don’t you just wear what makes you feel like yourself?” Easier said than done, Semarjian thought, but that question got her thinking about what influences the choices made by people in need of a great look.

Zoom out: Semarjian is one of many young founders who are convinced that Gen Z wants a personalized shopping experience. Retail Brew spoke to Semarjian, founder of fashion-curation app Mada, and Ana Kannan, founder of sustainability-focused apparel marketplace Toward, about challenges they’ve faced and the Gen Z consumer.

• “I was also really interested at the time in all the innovations happening with AI in the retail industry,” Semarjian, now 24, told Retail Brew. “I saw there [were] a lot of cool things happening, but no one was kind of really serving any real value yet. There were smart mirrors and all this cool stuff, but everything felt a little bit gimmicky.”

Cold calls, big dreams: When the Mada app went live in January 2020, the goal was to make personal style algorithmic. It matches shoppers with outfits for special occasions. It took three years of sending cold emails before Semarjian received responses during her senior year of college.

Read the full story from Retail Brew here.—KM

Each Tuesday, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Emma Herrman is communications director at Greenbush: The Education Service Center, an educational organization based in Kansas. She was initially hired as its hospitality and programs coordinator in 2020, a role that involved planning logistics for professional-development events in school districts across Kansas.

“However, I was hired about three days before the entire world shut down in March 2020, and we stopped having in-person events. Suddenly unable to do the job I was hired on to do, I took the initiative and made myself useful in other ways—I helped monitor our social media, created media campaigns for virtual events we were hosting via Zoom instead of the in-person ones, and started teaching myself design basics using Canva and occasionally the Adobe suite,” she told Marketing Brew.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in marketing? My company provides professional development to small school districts who may not have the funding to provide their own PD, and we also host spring and summer camps at our Camp and Retreat Center. My job is to showcase the wide variety of programs we offer, whether that be through focused social media blasts, detailed program flyers, or emailed newsletters!

What’s your favorite ad campaign? Honestly, any ad campaign that makes me laugh. I’m of the ”Idk, my BFF Jill?” generation and I still quote it to this day.

What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? I’m loving how digital things are becoming [from] a marketing standpoint. A lot of my company’s marketing is done through social media posts and newsletters. We have some paper flyers we hand out at in-person events, but we see a greater response digitally. It seems kind of obvious that things are going digital, as they have been for a long time, but the pandemic has really highlighted how easy it is to get your message across from anywhere in the world.

My least favorite trend is the increasing reliance on influencers. Specifically, for education marketing, influencers do nothing to help us forward our message and get our name out there. Also, as a personal preference, I’ve never found influencers to be particularly ”real” and I’ve found that their marketing usually turns me off of the product they’re trying to push.

What’s one marketing-related podcast/social account/series you’d recommend? For school-related marketing, I highly recommend checking out #SocialSchool4EDU. Education marketing is a lot different than “regular” marketing. And Andrea just GETS that.

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

The ’gram: Read up on Instagram’s sensitive-content control feature and what it might mean for reach.

Yardsticks: Bookmark this infographic of the important social media metrics to track.

In stitches: We know, we were afraid to ask, too. Here’s how to stitch videos on TikTok.

Know what makes them click: Website conversion rates increased by a whopping 27% from 2020. Get your copy of Contentsquare’s 2022 Digital Experience Benchmark Report for 100 digital insights from more than 46B global user sessions. See how your website stacks up.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Find your next great marketer by sharing your openings with our 250K+ industry leading marketers on the Marketing Brew Job Board!

Today’s featured openings:

• Marketing Services Client Success Manager at Third Door Media
• Design & Content Specialist at ABCK Corp
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Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Can agencies make clients more eco-friendly?
• What’s the perfect number of ads in a podcast episode?
• Upfront presentations are all fun and games—but they rarely change media buyers’ minds

McDonald’s instantly recognizable “I’m Lovin’ It” jingle is the fast-food brand’s longest-running slogan. Which agency is responsible for the original tagline that morphed into the catchy tune?

1. BBDO Worldwide
2. Heye & Partner
3. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
4. Schafer Condon Carter

Keep scrolling for the answer.