by Sara Vincent, managing director, UK, Utiq
I think it’s fair to say the news that Google had decided not to proceed with the deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome took the industry somewhat by surprise, although it was not fully unexpected. While the deadline for their removal had been put back several times, the July announcement was of a different order of magnitude – not another delay, but a complete backtrack on the plan.
At first glance, the move appeared to have undermined years of work carried out by many companies in the ad tech industry to come up with a better, more privacy-centric way of serving people with relevant ads. After all, why bother rolling out an alternative if the method the industry has come to rely on is sticking around?
So, what does the fallout look like? In all honesty, Google’s about-turn has done nothing to dampen the enthusiasm for life beyond the third-party cookie. We are still having a number of conversations with agencies, and have seen more reaching out to us in the wake of Google’s announcement. Many of these were previously focused on preparing for Google’s Privacy Sandbox, but they now also want to talk to us about an approach that gives them more control, which is a positive development.
I sense that a lot of the industry feels that it’s too dangerous and too unreliable to let one single company – one that already exerts an enormous amount of power – influence their own decisions and product roadmaps still further. Better, surely, to continue working from the widely-accepted premise that in an age of transparency and respect for privacy in advertising, third party cookies are simply not fit for purpose.
The cookieless web
There are a couple of reasons why this makes sense. Firstly, whatever Google does eventually decide about cookies in Chrome, the fact remains that circa 40% of the online population is already cookieless anyway, given the moves made by several other browsers to remove third-party cookies over the past few years. That’s just under half the total audience, unaddressable – think about that for a moment. (And then continue that thought, to consider what the impact is when the majority of the unaddressable audience lives in the open web.)
Secondly, consumers’ appreciation of their personal data has advanced enormously in the past few years. The introduction of GDPR in Europe and similar regulations elsewhere in the world have put the onus on businesses to be more transparent about how they wish to collect and use people’s personal data. At the same time, initiatives like Apple’s introduction of its App Tracking Transparency framework have made it clearer to consumers that businesses are actively seeking to collect their personal data, and at the same time, have made it easier for them to opt out of sharing it.
So the time spent working on the next era of addressability has not been wasted. I believe the cookie will self-destruct at some point, and in the meantime brands and publishers continue to test and find better outcomes and better user experiences.
Publishers lean in
Publishers and their SSP partners have traditionally been ahead of the curve, and have been busy over the past couple of years integrating alternative technologies to the cookie. In fact, I think the sell-side is more ready for what comes next than the buy-side. They know that if they’re not, they will lose ad revenues to those that are.
The buy-side needs adtech to deliver at scale, and that is improving fast. It’s now time for the buy-side as a whole to lean in and come on this journey towards a more responsible, consumer-focused way of advertising.
So yes, cookies are here to stay, for a little bit longer at least. But from my perspective, the ad tech industry continues to show a united front in continuing to develop a better, more privacy-centric way of running ad campaigns.
