From cookies to consent: Rethinking attribution in 2025

As third-party cookies decline and privacy regulations tighten, marketers in 2025 are rethinking how they track and attribute customer behaviour. The article explores the shift from cookie-based tracking to consent-driven strategies, highlighting the growing importance of first-party data and transparent consent experiences.

Understanding what truly drives a customer to make a purchase has never been more complex or more critical.  

As marketers navigate a world where a single buying decision can span billboards, browser searches, social media, emails, and text messages, the challenge of accurately attributing success to the right touchpoints has grown exponentially.  

At the same time, evolving privacy regulations and the decline of third-party cookies are forcing a fundamental rethink of how we track and interpret consumer behavior.  

This article explores the shifting terrain of marketing attribution in 2025, highlighting the growing importance of first-party data and consent-driven strategies in building trust, optimizing campaigns, and delivering personalized customer experiences. 

Key takeaways:

• Third-party cookies are fading, making traditional attribution models less reliable and pushing marketers to find new strategies.
• First-party data is now essential, offering a more privacy-compliant and sustainable way to track customer behaviour.
• Consent-driven experiences not only build trust but also create clearer data trails for analysing customer journeys.
• Attribution remains complex, especially with fragmented touchpoints and limited visibility across channels.
• AI-powered attribution models can help personalise experiences and improve ROI, but only when supported by robust, consented data.

Jump to each section:

• From billboards to SMS: Shifting customer behaviors
• The challenges of marketing attribution
• The cookies have crumbled – legal risks of tracking consumers
• How can marketers accurately track attribution going forward?

From billboards to SMS: Shifting customer behaviors

Take the case of a consumer who sees a digital billboard ad for sunscreen while commuting and is reminded they need a new pair of sunglasses for an upcoming holiday. Later that day, they search online for “best sunglasses for travel.”

Third-party advertising cookies track this behaviour, and soon after, the consumer sees targeted ads for sunglasses on Instagram and in their web browser.

They click through to a sunglasses retailer’s website and sign up for a 10% discount in exchange for their email address. The retailer immediately sends a welcome email with the discount code and an offer to sign up for SMS alerts for an additional 10% off.

The consumer opts in to text messages and receives a series of promotions featuring different sunglasses styles. They browse the retailer’s Instagram page, compare prices on competitor sites, and finally use the combined 20% discount to purchase a pair of sunglasses.

This common, but complicated process may sound like a lot of effort to sell (and purchase) a pair of sunglasses.

However, this is the world that marketers deal with all the time – the need to create a cross-channel set of experiences that (hopefully) lead to a purchase.

Not only that, but marketers must also determine which steps in the process triggered the desired outcome so that they can repeat effective campaigns and avoid wasting money and time on ineffective ones.

Did cross-context online advertising based on search terms lead to the purchase? Was it an appealing Facebook page? Perhaps instead it was the marketing text or email messaging? Discount coupon codes? All the above? Some of the above?

The challenges of marketing attribution

• Complex customer journeys: Purchases often involve multiple touchpoints across channels, making it difficult to isolate which interaction influenced the final decision. 

• Limited visibility and control: Not all touchpoints are within a company’s control, and many variables affect consumer behavior, complicating attribution accuracy. 

• Data privacy concerns: Attribution relies on tracking individual behavior over time, raising ethical and regulatory issues, especially when consumers receive little direct benefit. 

• Dependence on third-party data: Traditional attribution models often rely on third-party cookies, which are increasingly restricted or deprecated. 

• Inconsistent data quality: With fragmented data sources and reduced tracking capabilities, marketers struggle to gather reliable, comprehensive insights. 

Marketing attribution is the process marketers go through to answer this question. Defined by one source as “the analytical science of determining which marketing tactics are contributing to sales or conversions,” marketing attribution helps marketers tease out the effectiveness of each marketing touchpoint or combination of touchpoints.  

For example, marketing attribution analysis can underscore the importance of a discount code following an email message suggesting a pair of sunglasses for purchase, or a Facebook ad view before a text message with a discount code and link to a summer of sunglasses product campaign page.  

In addition to helping marketing departments adjust experiences to optimize marketing efforts and increase return on investment for marketing dollars, generative attribution data can help a company adjust customer experiences real-time.  

This means that, with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI), companies can use marketing attribution analysis techniques to create and guide a customer through an end-to-end set of experiences most likely to please that individual customer.  

Whether conducting attribution analysis to refine marketing efforts and prove Return on Investment (ROI) or using generative attribution techniques to customize and personalize customer experiences, marketing attribution is tricky to definitively calculate.  

For one thing, there are so many variables in each set of experiences, only some of which are under a company’s direct control, marketing departments can struggle to pinpoint a single, optimized series of touchpoints. Then, there are privacy concerns.  

At its most basic level, marketing attribution requires detailed tracking of individuals – their experiences and behaviors – often across multiple channels and even companies, and over time.  

While marketing attributions can theoretically help a company deliver a better experience to customers, there is no direct, substantive benefit to the data subjects in question. In other words, consumers must submit to a string of unknown companies closely monitoring their behavior in return for essentially nothing.  

The cookies have crumbled – legal risks of tracking consumers

Tracking has traditionally relied on online cookies for a substantial amount of the pertinent data.  

Over the last few years, we have seen a heavy one-two punch to cookie-based information. 

• Loss of third-party cookie data: With increasing browser restrictions and cookie deprecation, marketers are losing access to a major source of behavioral tracking data. 
• Consent requirements reduce data volume: Cookie banners, opt-outs, and tools like Global Privacy Control (GPC) empower users to block tracking, leading to significant gaps in attribution data. 
• Inconsistent tracking across platforms: Varying privacy laws and browser settings create fragmented data environments, making it harder to build a unified view of the customer journey. 
• Reduced visibility into cross-site behavior: Without third-party cookies, marketers struggle to track users across different websites, limiting their ability to connect touchpoints. 
• Greater reliance on first-party strategies: To maintain attribution accuracy, marketers must shift towards consented, first-party data collection, requiring new tools, processes, and trust-building efforts. 

How can marketers accurately track attribution going forward?

Attribution is hard to determine even with robust, accurate information. Determining attribution with limited tracking data can be impossible.  

However, there are two primary actions that marketers can take to improve that bleak picture: rely on first party data and establish a robust end-to-end consent experience. 

Rely on first-party data 

Organizations that prepared for cookie deprecation primarily revised their marketing strategy to focus on first party data.  

Google’s reversal on its cookie stance notwithstanding, cookie consent/cookie deprecation/GPC signals rarely impact first-party cookie data.  

A company that uses online trackers only on its own assets both earns customer trust and avoids the pitfalls that third party cookie choice and deprecation bring.  

Establish a clear end-to-end consent experience 

One of the best ways to get someone’s permission for data use is simply to ask. A company that carefully crafts its consent and preference experience will not only gain customer trust, but it will also establish a chain of interactions that can reveal what combination of experiences, under what circumstances, lead to a purchase.  

In other words, a thoughtful and comprehensive consent and preference experience will provide a trail that marketers can analyze to determine which touchpoints lead a customer to “yes.”