In late July, Google announced that it no longer planned to phase out third-party tracking cookies from Chrome. This marks the latest development of Google’s third-party cookie deprecation plans, which were initially announced in 2020. It subsequently pushed the deadline to end support for cookies three times, with the latest delay in April pushing the deadline to 2025.
This decision will not come as a surprise to many, given the distance between the stated conditions for phase out- with the industry accepting alternative solutions that preserve the capabilities of targeting and measurement- and the current industry feedback. One of the reasons for the last delay came as a result of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) report, who needed to report that Google’s cookie alternatives ( Privacy Sandbox) met the industry’s needs. That is they replaced existing functionality and that Google was not creating a monopoly. The industry has been increasingly vocal about shortcomings.
The CMA had three main concerns involving Privacy Sandbox: transparency into what consumers were opting into, antitrust concerns with Google taking in more first-party data and a governance model that would make the product sustainable long term. Advertisers and Publishers also expressed concerns with Privacy Sandbox, with some finding that the product didn’t deliver the same effectiveness as cookies, while other tests found that websites running Sandbox had serious latency issues.
Realizing that Sandbox wouldn’t be an adequate replacement for third-party cookies, Google is introducing an "approach that elevates user choice,” likely an opt-in or opt-out mechanism similar to that Apple applied with the 'do not track' option for Apple apps.
While this may satisfy the CMA’s concerns and marketers are likely breathing a sigh of relief --the solution could still pose an obstacle for marketers. It is safe to assume this is going to be a notification to consumers that they have to choose to accept cookies or not. Therefore variables such as the language used, the order of the options, the color of the box, consumer understanding, and, particularly, the point in the user journey that this “choice” is given will all impact the percentage of people that choose to allow or deny cookies. For Apple, the choice to use the word “tracking” almost prompts the user to make a certain decision. Further pushing the consumers, a study from the University of Bath School of Management found that 43% of users were “confused or unclear” about what app tracking entails and 51% were concerned about privacy. As a result, according to Statista, as of April 2022, the opt-in rate was around 25 percent. So again, Google holds the power here in this situation.
I predict that this will lead to a slow decline of cookie availability and the end state will be similar, with an increasingly small, potentially tiny, group of users that can be reached through third-party cookies. Google’s solution at the end of this four year long saga could be viewed as a more regulator friendly approach-- because it is hard to argue with consumer choice. But, it's also more industry friendly as the phase out will likely be more gradual giving more time for advertisers and publishers to test solutions.
For now, the reality of the situation is that in order to reach all consumers, advertisers need to deploy cookie and non-cookie based solutions. Cookies reach an estimated 40% of consumers today and as this decreases, the importance of having tactics for the majority as well as the minority will increase in order to maintain a conversation with the whole of the market.
Posted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership self-publishing platform.
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The opinions expressed here are the author's views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.org/MyersBizNet.