What we’re thinking about Google’s Chrome cookies U-turn

On Monday evening, Google gave another update on their plans to fully deprecate third party cookies from the Chrome browser. This has been a hugely divisive subject as Google has been tangling with trying to appease customer privacy concerns, publisher criticism of their proposed solutions as well as market regulators. 

In short, the update is that Google have u-turned on their plans to completely block third party cookies in Chrome. Instead, they’ll be giving users the ability to decide whether they want to use them or not within the browser across all sites. 

In a blog post, Antony Chavez, VP of Privacy Sandbox outlined a ‘new path’ for Privacy Sandbox. 

“Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time. We’re discussing this new path with regulators, and will engage with the industry as we roll this out.” 

As usual, there’s upsides and downsides to this announcement. The survival of third party cookies means that ad delivery and measurement technologies are still able to take advantage of the value that they provide. However, by implementing the ‘user choice’ approach, we’d still expect the amount of data available through third party cookies to reduce over time. It’s worth remembering that the majority of other browsers still won’t accept third party cookies. 

So what do we do now? 

Even though third party cookies now don’t look likely to disappear completely, many of the preparations that we’re making are still valid. 

• Focus on durable, privacy-preserving measurement solutions such as Enhanced Conversions, Conversion API 

• Grow and leverage your first party data to continue to effectively target your most valuable audiences 

• Continue to explore and test cookieless targeting methods to mitigate any loss of performance from cookie-reliant media buys 

• Stay on top of changes to consent mode. As Google moves to a ‘browser consent model’ it may be that updates are required to stay compliant. 

So, while on the surface of it, this is a major change in direction, it doesn’t necessarily mean a huge change of approach is needed, if you’ve already been preparing for life without cookies, keep going, if you haven’t started, start. We’ll share more updates as more details emerge. 

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