The cookie debate has become one of the industry’s longest-running weather reports. Every few months, the clouds gather, someone predicts a storm, and the market responds with a mix of urgency and hesitation: some run towards contextual advertising in the rain, others stay under the shrinking shelters of third-party cookies, while many stand somewhere in between with leaky umbrellas and half-built plans.
Yet, beneath the noise, something more important has changed: advertisers have been forced to question how much of their audience strategy should depend on infrastructure they do not control.
Sotiris Oikonomou, Managing Director, MarkApp, speaks to Campaign Middle East about the real underlying issue in the industry. It is not whether cookies will eventually disappear on a particular date; it is whether brands, agencies and media buyers have learnt the larger lesson.
The market has spent years preparing for an ending, but the more valuable shift may be a change in discipline: cleaner data thinking, stronger contextual intelligence, better supply choices and a more mature understanding of connected TV (CTV).
This matters especially in the Middle East, where social platforms, first-party environments and streaming behaviour have shaped a different media reality from more open-web-dependent markets. The region has an appetite for new formats, but appetite alone is not strategy.
As with any fast-growing channel, the danger is not that marketers move too slowly. It is that they move quickly without understanding what they are buying.
The cookie conversation is no longer: ‘To be or not to be’
The industry has treated cookie deprecation like a conversation approaching a cliff edge. Oikonomou argues that this framing misses the more practical point. The conversation should be less about when a single technology may be eventually switched off and more about how advertisers reduce dependency on systems that can be changed by others at any moment.
“We are not talking about the death, we are talking about complete turnaround in all the mindset of the brands and advertisers on how to target the audiences,” said Sotiris Oikonomou, Managing Director, MarkApp. “What is the key lesson here is that you must not be reliable on a third-party decision for the whole industry,”
He points out that large parts of the ecosystem already operate without third-party cookies, particularly given the choices made years ago by browsers such as Safari and Firefox. His estimate is that nearly half of the global industry now functions without depending on those signals.
The practical outcome is that planning has become more varied, and buyers are looking beyond the old identity-led playbook.
Contextual is not the spare tire
For years, contextual advertising was often treated as a fallback option. If identity signals were weak or unavailable, marketers reached for page-level cues and keyword lists.
That older model created obvious problems. A single word could appear in helpful or harmful settings, and a brand could easily end up beside unsuitable material if the system failed to understand meaning.
The current opportunity is more sophisticated: interpreting the surrounding environment, the type of content, the moment of consumption and the broader suitability of the placement.
“Adding contextual as a safety or like a backup solution is not the point,” Oikonomou said.
The distinction is important. Contextual should not simply be the umbrella marketers open when identity rain begins to fall. It should be part of how brands match communication to mood, medium and situation.
A person watching entertainment on a big screen is in a different state of mind from someone scrolling a feed or reading an article with purchase intent.
The channel may deliver the ad, but context shapes whether it feels welcome.
CTV was never built on the old web logic
Connected TV is central to this discussion because it does not behave like the open web. Oikonomou is clear that advertisers should not try to force web-based identity assumptions into environments where they were never native.
“CTV was never ID related, it’s something completely new,” Oikonomou said.
That makes CTV both exciting and misunderstood. It offers the scale and emotional quality of large-screen viewing, but with programmatic capabilities and richer contextual signals.
At the same time, it requires a different measurement and planning mindset. While the temptation is to ask it to behave like display. Oikonomou’s argument is that marketers should judge it on its own terms.
“CTV is coming with enhanced contextual capabilities to offer more solutions. And on top of that it is overcoming any kind of rumour about dependency on the cookies and the IDs,” Oikonomou said.
In the Middle East, this distinction becomes even more relevant.
Oikonomou notes that the local market is not as dependent on the open web as some other regions. Social platforms and first-party environments already play a dominant role.
That gives the region a potential advantage: it has not built all its muscle memory around a model that is now under strain.
Scale is not the same as value in contextual advertising
CTV is attracting money, attention and ambition. Oikonomou describes it as one of the most discussed areas in media, with global budgets growing significantly.
But growth, he warns, brings its own complications. When money moves quickly into a channel, quality gaps, weak supply paths and invalid traffic can follow.
“We see a rapid growth on the CTV, really hyped, like the hot topic of the whole industry over the last few years,” Oikonomou said. “We are talking about a $38bn market globally.”
The danger is familiar to anyone who has watched programmatic markets mature. New budgets create incentives for every kind of intermediary to enter the chain.
Without scrutiny, marketers may believe they are buying premium video while actually paying for weaker inventory, messy supply routes or placements that do little for attention and outcomes.
This is where the industry needs a more serious vocabulary around quality.
Premium CTV cannot simply mean a large screen or a streaming environment. It has to involve clearer signals around content, channel names, supply chain transparency, the number of intermediaries involved and whether the advertiser can understand the route from buyer to publisher.
Cheap CPMs can become expensive mistakes
Every market has pressure on cost. The Middle East is no exception.
Oikonomou recognises the commercial instinct to seek low prices and high reach, but warns that this logic can be dangerous in CTV if it becomes the only measure of success.
“All the marketing teams want, ideally, the lowest price with the highest range as everything in life,” Oikonomou said.
The problem is that low apparent cost can hide poor value. If inventory quality is weak, user attention is low, or the supply route is inefficient, the cheaper buy may not be cheaper at all.
It can produce disappointing results and leave marketers blaming the channel rather than the buying strategy.
“CTV is like an outcome-oriented market,” Oikonomou said.
That shifts the question from what was bought to what was achieved. Video completion, viewability, attention and placement quality matter because they help advertisers understand whether the investment had a real chance to work.
In that sense, CTV should not be planned only as a volume machine. It should be treated as a quality environment where context, attention and supply integrity are all part of the value equation.
Get closer to the context of contextual advertising: ‘Own more, depend less’
Oikonomou’s advice is practical rather than theoretical. Brands and agencies need to understand the underlying mechanics of programmatic buying, not just the dashboard outputs. This includes invalid traffic, protocols, bid-stream analysis, supply paths and the role of intermediaries.
“Learn about IVT. Learn about the Open RTB 2.6 protocols. Understand contextual through deep dives. Then you will achieve more of KPIs by the end of the day,” Oikonomou said.
This is not glamorous work. It is closer to checking the pipes than painting the walls covering the pipes. In complex media environments, the pipes matter. Poor supply hygiene can quietly drain budgets, distort measurement and make good strategy look ineffective.
“Try to go into logs to understand what’s the actual programmatic media buying they do,” Oikonomou said.
That level of inspection can help marketers identify safer partners, weaker routes and areas where education is needed.
Oikonomou also makes the point that a direct path does not automatically guarantee better quality. Sometimes the right intermediary can improve technology, educate publishers and create better results. The issue is not whether intermediaries exist, but whether they add value.
The clearest message from Oikonomou is that advertisers must take greater control of their data and decision-making.
“Better own the data; don’t be dependent on third-party vendors like when the industry attempted it with quick depreciation and failed,” Oikonomou said.
For the local market, that means investing in internal data capability, clean rooms and sharper contextual planning. It also means understanding what is being bought, from whom, and through which route.
In other words, marketers need to move from surface-level media buying to informed stewardship of the full chain.
The message is not anti-technology; it is a call to use technology with more literacy and less blind faith. New tools can create better outcomes, but only when marketers know what problem they are solving and what trade-offs they are accepting.
The regional opportunity is significant. The Middle East has high digital adoption, strong platform behaviour and growing interest in CTV. But the next stage will require the market to pair ambition with education. It is not enough to follow global case studies or move budgets because a channel is fashionable.
Oikonomou’s argument is ultimately a reminder that media maturity is not measured by how quickly a market adopts the latest technology; it is measured by how clearly it understands quality, context, data ownership and accountability.
Watch the full podcast here.
CREDITS:
Guest: Sotiris Oikonomou, Managing Director, MarkApp
Host: Anup Oommen, Editor, Campaign Middle East
Production: Surajit Dutta, Content Production Manager, Motivate Media Group
Videography: Mark Mathew, Creative Content Producer, Motivate Media Group
Editing: John Melencion, Content Producer, Motivate Media Group
