Google has once again pushed back its self-imposed deadline of the end of 2023 for the deprecation of third-party cookies. It will now “begin” to phase them out in the second half of 2024. Google have realised that their original timelines were unrealistic amidst consistent challenging feedback from government, developers, and advertisers over a lack of clarity on the direction of the Privacy Sandbox initiative. Google are also conscious of the impact of IOS 14. Changes made by Apple which have impacted performance of Facebook advertising revenue are slowing down the process to create the strongest possible solution that protects revenue in the future.

Why is it important?

Firefox and Safari blocked third-party cookies years ago. Chrome accounts for well over 50% of the global browser market and hosts more than half the world’s internet traffic. Google, unlike Apple, has a massive advertising business.

The last thing Google wants is to conjure a perceived targeting catastrophe for advertisers by turning the biggest advertising browser in the world into a less profitable and effective advertising tool. Any impact on brands marketing/advertising will ultimately affect Google’s business model to some degree.

And given that over 50% of all smart phone users are Apple, when they introduced IOS 14.5 in March 2022, there has been and continues to be a severe impact on data sharing, preferences, user behaviours and tracking etc with 75% uptake amongst existing consumers. This affects advertisers’ ability to build Look a Likes and scale up activity based on those audiences. It will also affect our ability to do greater retargeting based on user behaviours and opt ins.

It is good to know that there is still time for brands, agencies and partners to adapt and seek alternative tracking and behavioural targeting opportunities. However, we should not at all be slowing down our objective to understand the impact of these changes but accelerating our capabilities in the spaces below:

More and more consumers are starting to understand the importance of data privacy. We are all becoming savvier and more aware about the value of our data and how it can be used for advertising and the importance of value exchange for their user information. People want to rely on brands, tech companies etc to use data ethically, securely and to drive overall advantage for them.

Apple has decided to take a big stance on this already and Google are preparing for this sometime in 2024. They have a lot of power as most digital advertising is delivered through. Therefore, it is crucial that brands make more of their 1PD and the wealth of 1PD held by broadcaster and publisher partner’s without relying on third-party cookies.