Google keeps third-party cookies on Chrome, so what does it mean for advertisers?
Data & Analytics

Google keeps third-party cookies on Chrome, so what does it mean for advertisers?

George Stolton • 24/07/2024

In surprising news this week (though maybe not too surprising based on numerous delays), Google announced it is abandoning their plans to deprecate third-party cookies, something they have been working towards since 2020. Instead, they have now decided to push a one-time third-party cookie acceptance for a user. It is important to note Google are still working on their Privacy Sandbox, but this decision buys time to iron out the issues and regulatory concerns which have caused multiple delays already.

The push to reduce reliance on third-party cookies isn’t new, with Mozilla Firefox and Safari leading the charge years ago. Google has been the last major holdout, mostly due to their large global market share and potential concerns over lost revenue if advertisers cannot track performance details or reach the same audiences.

Google’s most recent timeline for third-cookie deprecation:

Cookies Timeline

 

What does this change mean?

Within the Google Ads ecosystem:

Since the conversations around third-party cookies have been going on for so long, advertisers have generally been prepared to move away from this and will hopefully adopt other privacy-safe measurement options. Google Analytics 4 was launched in 2020 as the update to Universal Analytics, without relying on third-party cookies for measurement. Since GA4 primarily utilises first-party cookies, not third-party, this is your primary source for tracking and audience generation. As UA was sunset in 2023, most advertisers who made this switch likely won’t see much difference.

The value of 1st party data has continued to increase amongst conversations of cookie deprecation and should remain a pivotal part of advertiser strategy across both audience targeting and performance tracking.

 

What about the rest?

There are still wider considerations across other ad platforms and websites which may rely on third-party cookies tracking your data across domains, which is what this decision ultimately impacts.

Advertisers across other channels such as Meta or Display are more likely to see a bigger impact, especially if platform-specific Conversion APIs are not in use. Many of these ad platforms rely on a mixture of third and first-party cookies for their respective tracking pixels to fire on-site, and feedback audience and tracking data back to the ad platform. Therefore, if the new direction from Google causes a blanket opt-out of third-party cookie tracking, there is going to be far less data shared.

We don’t know what opt-in rates would be like at this stage or how it would roll out in practice, but we can potentially take a lesson from Apple and their ATT opt-in rate, which started at less than 20%, but has grown over time to an average of 30-40%.

ROAST recommends all advertisers continue to take all steps possible to maximise data collection using privacy-compliant tools. Doing this sooner than later will provide a benchmark and help to understand the true impact when these changes do eventually occur.

 

Final thoughts from ROAST’s Senior Media Solutions Consultant, Milan Nayee:

“Whilst we read all these posts in shock and awe, I remain looking on the brightside of this news. In the last few years the advertising world, and we at ROAST have been preparing, adapting and innovating for this change. Was this a waste? No. We’ve all become better advertisers for it.

The deprecation of 3rd party cookies maybe scrapped, but we are still moving towards a privacy-first world, relying more on 1st party cookies, advanced analyses such as Media Mixed Modelling (MMM) and sophisticated tracking solutions such as server-side tracking. These are not in vain and will help us get more out of our data.”