What’s Happening
On July 22nd, after multiple years of planning and delays, Google announced new plans regarding phasing out third-party cookies and the privacy sandbox as a whole. The new plans include that instead of deprecating third-party cookies, they will work with regulators and develop a plan to give users the choice that applies across their web browsing experience.
Additional Context
Google has faced considerable pushback in regard to their plan to phase out third-party cookies, from regulators, advertisers and non-profits. Reasons vary, but include items such as giving Google more market power, enabling new methods of user tracking, and considerable development effort required for adoption. When combined with the fact that other major browsers have declined to support various privacy sandbox standards, the sandbox proposals faced considerable resistance and resulted in Google being subject to increased regulatory scrutiny.
Still, while this new path gives some much-wanted relief to advertisers, the regulatory side of things continues to focus on Google’s proposed plans. The United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority is seeking comment until August 12th 2024 - as seen below:
"On 22 July 2024, Google announced that it is changing its approach to Privacy Sandbox. Instead of removing third-party cookies from Chrome, it will be introducing a user-choice prompt, which will allow users to choose whether to retain third party cookies. The CMA will now work closely with the ICO to carefully consider Google’s new approach to Privacy Sandbox. We welcome views on Google’s revised approach, including possible implications for consumers and market outcomes. Any views can be shared with the CMA by 12 August 2024 on privacysandbox@cma.gov.uk. Given these developments, we will not publish our planned quarterly update report at the end of this month."
Google also plans to continue to develop the privacy sandbox APIs, but with pushback from both browser manufacturers and developers, it remains unclear how successful such efforts will be in the long term.
Do We Have to Worry About Third Party Cookies Anymore?
In short - yes.
Reviewing data from Statcounter indicates that worldwide, Chrome currently retains a 65% market share. However, that does mean that 35% of all web traffic is not Chrome-based, and that traffic either restricts or blocks third-party cookies outright. Specific verticals may be skewed heavily against Chrome, with some companies (such as in retail) seeing upwards of 70-80% Safari traffic. Technology that relies on third-party cookies will not work as expected on such traffic. Then, depending on how Chrome implements the user choice - a portion of the traffic on Chrome will also block third-party cookies.
When looked at from this perspective, technology relying on third-party cookies continues to exist on borrowed time. As users update devices, change browsers, or fall under privacy regulations, the amount of addressable traffic able to be targeted by third-party cookies will continue to decrease with time. We believe it is in the best interest of organizations to analyze their third-party cookie usage and seek to replace the technology with more privacy-preserving technologies, which will allow for easier meeting of compliance obligations.
What’s Next
- Remain focused on providing privacy-forward solutions that are based in strong first-party data collection strategies.
- Google’s cookie decision doesn’t change the direction of the industry. Companies that shift to more durable identifiers with first-party data will see stronger performance.
- Recognize that Chrome remains the last holdout in the browser market to support third-party cookies, which may mean a significant amount of site traffic is already affected with third-party cookies being unsupported.
- On the advertising and analytics side, Google is maintaining their current guidance. Google is still committed to building out the Sandbox APIs.
- Considering the regulatory side of things, Google may be prevented by regulators from incentivizing users to continue to accept the use of third-party cookies.
- Third-party cookies will continue to be slowly phased out as more users adopt technology that blocks them.
- Proceed by continuing to leverage third-party cookies where effective, while simultaneously accelerating the development and implementation of innovative, alternative strategies, including:some text
- Marketing Mix Modeling
- Unified IDs
- Deterministic and Probabilistic Models
- Customer Data Platforms (CDPs)
- Bring your own ID to tag management system (BYOID to TMS) via server-side TMS
- Data Clean Rooms
- People-based Advertising (using hashed identifiers)
Our Relevant Certifications for this Work
- Google Privacy for Agencies and Partners Certification
