Adjusting to Cookieless Advertising—What You Need to Know

The cookie deprecation timeline

We’ve been hearing about it for years, but where do we stand now? And what should marketers and advertisers expect when it comes to cookieless advertising in the near future? Here are some of the actions various browsers, operating systems, and device makers have taken in the last few years — and where they’re going next.

Google Chrome, Android

• February 2020: Google begins hinting at a plan for Chrome to block the third-party cookies.
• July 2023: Google reports it will gradually begin enabling the Privacy Sandbox toolkit for Chrome developers, which will replace third-party tracking cookies with privacy-preserving API alternatives.
• January 2024: Google migrated 1% of Chrome users (30 million people) to the Privacy Sandbox.
• Q3 2024: Google will finish migrating 100% of Chrome users to the Privacy Sandbox and disable all third-party cookies.

Mozilla Firefox                      

• November 2015: Firefox first begins blocking tracking with the release of Tracking Protection, a feature people could turn on by using Private Browsing mode.
• October 2018: Firefox introduces Enhanced Tracking Protection, allowing users to activate it in regular browsing.
• September 2019: Firefox turns on Enhanced Tracking Protection by default for all Firefox users, reflecting their commitment to actively protect users.
• January 2020: Firefox starts blocking fingerprinting scripts by default to protect users from invasive online tracking.
• January 2021: Firefox implements a supercookies protection feature. Supercookies hide in different parts of a web browser and can continue to track users online even after they have cleared their cookies.
• April 2023: Firefox rolls out Total Cookie Protection, which confines cookies to the site on which they were created.

Apple, iOS, iPhone, Safari

• March 2020: Apple added Intelligent Tracking Prevention enhancements to iOS and iPadOS 13.4 and Safari 13.1, which blocked the use of all third-party cookies.
• April 2021: With the iOS 14.5 update, apps were forced to ask permission to track users. If users opt out, Apple won’t share their IDFA (identifier for advertisers).
• December 2021: Apple expands privacy protections with the iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey update, which enables users to opt-in to Private Relay, an always-on VPN-like service which hides IP and location data.
• June 2023: Apple introduce Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection, which strips “tracking parameters” from URLs in an effort to further eliminate tracking loopholes.             

Major players involved in the phase-out of third-party cookies

There are three primary groups of players when it comes to cookie deprecation:

1. Data protection authorities representing consumers
2. Tech companies
3. Marketers, advertisers, and publishers

Data protection authorities and regulators

In response to privacy concerns, various legislative bodies around the world have enacted regulations to protect consumer data, such as:

• The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
• The American Data Privacy Protection Act (ADPPA)
• The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

These regulations have forced websites to be more transparent about their data collection practices and to give users more control over their personal information. Other states like Colorado, Connecticut, Utah and Virginia also have similar legislation in place.

Regulators have been particularly scrutinizing walled gardens for unfair business practices and abuse of market dominance. As Suzie Stultz of AdMonsters explains:

“Thanks to their dominance, Google, Meta, and Amazon will continue to attract the lion’s share of the advertiser’s budget. Over the next few years, they will account for 83% of global digital advertising revenue. Regulators across the globe are doing all they can to stop the dominance, of course, but Big Tech shows no sign of going down without a fight.”

Tech companies                                             

Speaking of Big Tech, Google is the largest provider of online ads, followed by Meta and Amazon. Other major players include Apple/Safari/iOS and Mozilla/Firefox. Regulators, marketers, and consumers all dislike various aspects of these walled gardens — specifically lack of transparency and privacy concerns.

While Google’s cookie deprecation efforts may appear to be a magnanimous fix to privacy concerns, regulators around the world are scrutinizing Google’s actions as potential “privacy fixing”. It’s important to ask how these actions will impact the company’s already dominant position in digital advertising.

For example, Google may see benefits from cookie deprecation like:

• Increased reliance on first-party data: Thanks to its vast user base across Gmail, Search, YouTube and other services, advertisers will likely turn to Google Ads to leverage its treasure trove of first-party data for targeted campaigns.
• A stronger position in the ad ecosystem: The decline of third-party cookies weakens smaller publishers who rely on them for ad targeting. This could lead to a consolidation of power within the advertising industry, benefiting large platforms like Google.

Marketers, advertisers, and publishers

Industry trade groups are defending consumers’ right to free and an open web by pushing for a pseudonymous cross-publisher ID that would improve responsible addressable advertising.

The goal is to enable targeted advertising that respects user privacy. Advertisers could reach specific audiences based on interests or demographics — without needing to track individuals across the web.

What cookie deprecation means for advertisers

Third-party cookies currently fuel the majority of programmatic and digital advertising — and cookie deprecation will impact most of the tactics marketers rely on for effective campaigns.

At its simplest, cookie deprecation will impact cross-site tracking and identifier persistency. Without these capabilities, advertisers will struggle with:

• Reach: About 80% of advertisers depend on third-party cookies. Without them, those advertisers will need to search for other ways to reach their customers and prospects online.
• Behavioral advertising: Without user data obtained from third-party cookies, marketers will no longer be able to create the detailed profiles and audience segments they use for targeted campaigns.
• Retargeting: Third-party cookies allow ads to follow users from site to site and retarget users based on the actions they take. Cookie deprecation will reduce the effectiveness of retargeting campaigns and limit the ability to redirect traffic to a preferred site.
• Frequency capping: Advertisers use third-party cookies to limit the number of times an ad is shown to a particular user. Without frequency capping, advertisers will waste more spend — and ROAS will decline.
• Attribution and measurement: Losing third-party cookies means losing view-through attribution. This type of attribution allows you to track ad exposure across channels and evaluate the performance of your digital marketing mix. This will make it more challenging for marketing teams to unify fragmented customer journeys across channels.

Personalized ads in a cookieless world

With cookies finally on the way out, what’s a marketer to do?

The industry is developing and evaluating several new ways to provide cross-site data collection and persistent identifiers. This will be a time of adjustment for marketers as we all learn to work within this new and dynamic environment.

But there are a few key places to start adjusting.

1. Strengthen your first-party data

You’ll hear this one everywhere — as third-party cookies deprecate, first-party data will become more and more valuable. It will be critical to collect as much information about your own prospects and customers as possible, including:

• Postal addresses
• Email addresses
• Phone numbers
• Mobile ad IDs (MAIDs)
• Onsite user behavior
• In-app user behavior

It’s important, however, to make sure you’re collecting user consent (hello, cookie notice!) before implementing any first-party data strategy.

2. Resolve first-party data with an identity graph

Data on its own won’t do much to restore your ability to target ads, reach consumers, or measure your marketing. This is where a strong, interoperable identity graph comes in. An identity graph allows you to onboard your first-party data, resolve it to a real person, and reach those people in other places.

Perhaps the most beneficial aspect of a strong identity graph is identifying and reaching anonymous browsers (or unauthenticated web traffic). Sans cookies, and without an ID graph, you’re marketing to these browsers with less data and less precision. The result is poorer marketing performance and less-detailed insights about your own active customers and prospects.

Capitalizing on authenticated site traffic is still the gold standard for targeting accuracy. However, as you might expect, this is typically a tiny portion of your overall traffic.

The best identity graphs allow you to identify and advertise to both authenticated and unauthenticated traffic — which solves the problem of cross-site tracking.