Late July Google made an announcement no one was expecting.
It reversed its plans to remove third-party cookies after spending years trying to find an alternative for its Chrome browser.
Cancelling third-party cookies – which was initially due to happen in 2020 – would have impacted anyone working in or adjacent to online advertising and digital marketing.
First up, what are cookies and why do they matter to digital and marketing professionals?
According to the definition by Merriam-Webster cookies are “a small file or part of a file stored on a World Wide Web user’s computer, created and subsequently read by a website server, and containing personal information (such as a user identification code, customised preferences, or a record of pages visited).”
Cookies have been a huge part of digital advertising by giving online marketers the ability to track users across lots of websites and then send them target ads.
Back in 2020, Google announced that it would end support for cookies within a couple of years – by early 2022. It just needed time to work out how to address what users, publishers and advertisers needed.
This led to Google launching its ‘Privacy Sandbox’ initiative with the aim of finding a solution that protects user privacy while content can stay freely available on the open web.
In January 2021, Google said it was still “extremely confident” about the work it had done towards replacing cookies, including its ‘Federated Learning of Cohorts’, which involved placing people in groups according to their browsing data so that only ‘cohort IDs’ rather than individual IDs would be used to target them.
But things started to get rocky for Google’s plans by June 2021, when it decided to push the timeline back to give the digital advertising industry more time to prepare. When 2022 rolled around, Google said feedback had shown them advertisers would need more time to make the transition away from cookies and claimed the change would hugely impact their business.
On the 22nd July 2024, Google announced that it was canceling its plan to remove third-party cookies in its browser, citing feedback from both advertisers and regulators that had helped to inform its decision.
According to their blog, the company said making this transition would require “significant work by many participants” and would impact publishers, advertisers and anyone else involved in online advertising.
After cancelling its plans to depreciate third-party cookies, Google said it will instead introduce a new experience in Chrome that allows people to make an informed choice about the personalised ads they are being targeted with.
Anthon Chavez, VP of Privacy Sandbox said: “Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time. We’re discussing this new path with regulators, and will engage with the industry as we roll this out.”
So what’s the wider context to all of this?
Around three quarters of marketers globally rely on third-party cookies to gather data, with over 42% of websites using them to gather data.
These cookies track our online activities without us knowing, collecting information like products we learn and search history, so companies can tailor their marketing campaigns.
So they are pretty crucial to anyone involved in online advertising, website building and digital marketing.
But people’s fears about their privacy online are growing. According to a survey by Deloitte in 2020, 65% of respondents had major worries about excessive cookies.
Consumers generally want personalised ads but they don’t want marketers to be monitoring their every digital move, which is why Google has been forced to review its third-party cookie use, and other web browsers like Firefox and Safari have already phased out third-party cookies.
This is all part of a general shift towards having a greater focus on privacy, data protection and consumer rights in an increasingly digital world, with introductions like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Global Privacy Control (GPC).
While we don’t know exactly what the change will look like, and therefore cannot say specifically how it will impact online advertising, there are some likely impacts that organisations should prepare for.
These could include:
• Reduced tracking capabilities
• Impact on targeting and personalised ads
• Measurement issues
• Privacy and compliance challenges
Ultimately, while third-party cookies remain on Chrome for now, it might be a good idea for online marketers and website builders to get prepared and start considering other types of data collection, such as collecting first-party data directly from customers and website visitors. They could also look into alternative targeting technologies, including cohort targeting and also contextual targeting, the latter of which focuses on the context and content of a user’s web browsing activity.
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