After 7 years of uncertainty, Google has now reversed course on cookie deprecation but the end result is the same. Our identity data confirms – the cookieless era is already here to stay.
The power of the third-party cookie has eroded significantly since 2018. Many browsers have turned them off completely, new cookieless channels have risen in popularity and the end result is a very different landscape for marketers.
Today, on average 41% of the bidstream is cookieless, with European markets leading the way. For marketers, this means that to focus purely on Chrome and third-party cookie is walk away from almost half of the possible addressable audience.
All this announcement from Chrome does is re-affirms that the status quo will remain in effect.
What should we take away as an industry from this latest chapter in the Chrome story?
Our CTO Jochen Schlosser answers this,
“Most of the programmatic ecosystem is already cookieless and addressability powered by first-party IDs. Google has been a late mover when it comes to providing a scaled replacement.
As a result, it proves two things: Google has not managed to fulfil their promises and at the same time it underpins the large challenge we have in the ecosystem with governance and transparency into decision making. Google calls the shots and gives little basis for its decisions.
In Google’s announcement, they state that the regulatory landscape has changed. Since when? GDPR, CCPA, etc. are not new at all, and it would be curious if Google needs such long decision cycles to reflect on these in a large project like the Sandbox. The mentioned impact of AI on privacy is also vague. AI systems are often operating as black boxes, so it is not per se a road towards better privacy.
The only regulatory thing that really changed in the last months is the pressure from the anticompetition investigations. New rulings have raised the bar and the risk of any decisions that would impact an entire industry. It is unlikely that this did not play a role in the decision-making process.
The future of online addressability is multi-ID: We strongly believe that the future is multi-ID, and no single ID will take over or prevail. Third-party cookies are part of it of course, not more, not less. This recent decision from Google reaffirms that.”
Where does this leave the market after 7 years of changed deadlines and mixed signals? Ready to proceed with a trusted (European) alternative? With rising uncertainties tied to the new signals coming from the U.S. administration, we’re seeing a clear increase in interest from CMOs who are actively seeking trusted, European adtech partners to diversify and de-risk their tech stack.