Google has officially announced that it will not remove third-party cookies in Chrome. Ad execs are left wondering whether they can finally stop stockpiling antacids.
The pivot, announced yesterday, surprised many people — not because they thought Google’s cookie deprecation strategy was perfect, but because Google had promised it would happen regardless of the several delays.
There have been three delays since 2020. And with each delay, the new schedule for removing cookies became more ambiguous, feeding ad executives’ mistrust. To be fair, Google made an effort to make things better. Some received funds, while others met with the Privacy Sandbox development team. However, these attempts often felt insufficient to truly alleviate anyone’s fears.
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Just last week, publishers and ad tech executives expressed alarm about recent tests of Google’s Privacy Sandbox alternatives. Even agencies had stopped advocating for larger-scale trials of these alternatives. Google’s post-third-party cookie strategy was lost somewhere along the road.
Instead, Google has devised something that appears, on the surface, to emulate Apple’s intention to eliminate third-party monitoring on its devices — at least from what little information it has released thus far.
According to a blog post published on Monday by Anthony Chavez, VP of the Privacy Sandbox, Google “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.”
That is all Google has revealed so far. There are currently no details on what this experience would look like for Chrome users, how they would be shown it, or how it would function. Based on the early reaction, it’s reasonable to assume the ad industry is utterly disappointed.
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Ruben Schreurs, chief strategy officer at media management firm Ebiquity, expressed some of this ambivalence. “While it seems appealing on paper, the idea of providing consumers with a single wide consent control that applies to all third-party trackers across their whole web surfing experience simply does not align with current legislation and definitions of informed specific consent.
That’s a huge “if,” given that authorities would have to approve the idea – a process that, as Google’s ongoing collaboration with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has demonstrated, is far from simple. Even if a compromise is established, Schreurs believes Google’s power over whether users are tracked by third-party cookies should be opt-in. If this occurs, third-party cookies will be utilized far less frequently. Just like when Apple tried something similar in 2021.
“The bottom line is that Google has decided to take a different path: instead of forcibly opting users out, they will ask for their consent, and as a strong supporter of user choice and user privacy, I welcome that approach,” Loch Rose, Epsilon’s chief analytics officer, stated.
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However this technique plays out, third-party cookies are certainly on notice. They will become scarce in the near future. The writing is on the wall. Anyone who expected this to happen should rest assured that their bets were not in vain, despite Google’s decision.
“Innovation and work here doesn’t punish us,” said Justin Wohl, Snopes and TV Tropes’ CRO. “We’ll still get the upside of the cookie-enabled users … while also not experiencing as low of a low on [non-cookied browsers like Safari and Firefox].”
According to this viewpoint, publishers should be able to rest comfortable. Those who took the effort to test and deploy cookie-less options will continue to gain in the long run.
Grant Parker, president of Flashtalking by Mediaocean, understands this.
“A lot of the good work that was done to prepare for the cookie-less future will continue to apply to omnichannel advertising,” according to Parker. “With the emergence of social media, CTV and other cookie-less channels, advertisers were already adapting to working in a multi-ID, multi-signal environment, and Google’s change of plans won’t change this basic reality.”
Until there is more certainty about the future, most of the focus will be on the past. There will be debates about how we got to this position after what has felt like an endless sequence of deadlines and extensions over the last four years.
Especially because Google executives have recently expressed doubts about the future of cookies. Some advertising executives noticed that their connections at Google seemed less optimistic about the future.
Some ad executives openly acknowledged the potential that the Sandbox might never succeed, even musing about features that are strikingly similar to what Google is now proposing.
All of a sudden, the hypothesis begins to make more sense. Perhaps executives should have seen this coming sooner. Jason Bier, Adstra’s Chief Privacy Officer, did. In February, he wrote an essay for AdExchanger predicting that Google will not remove third-party cookies from Chrome due to mounting pressure from regulators, lawmakers, and the ad sector as a whole.
Executives like these are aiming at something simple: Google’s plan to eliminate third-party addressability in their browser was hampered by the need to appease privacy advocates while maintaining ad performance (and revenue). It is the addressability equivalent of an unstoppable force colliding with an immovable object. Finally, it was a waste of time and money that could have been spent on more essential matters.
“While this does not provide absolute certainty that there will be a new privacy roadmap for Chrome, I am encouraged by the bold move here,” said Mark McEachran, vice president of product management at ad tech provider Yieldmo. “At the very least, this all but likely gives an air of much-needed certainty on how the industry can adapt and move forward without concerns about the unknown”
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