In July 2024, after four years of work on its Privacy Sandbox initiative and several postponements, Google announced that it would no longer be deprecating third-party cookies in its market-leading web browser, Google Chrome. 

Despite initial enthusiasm for Google’s plan, it became clear that the transition away from third-party cookies would never be as seamless as anticipated.

Several factors have contributed to Google’s decision to reverse course:

1. Complexity of Replacing Third-Party Cookies: replacing third-party cookies with privacy-friendly alternatives turned out to be more challenging than Google had expected.
2. Industry Pushback: the digital advertising industry, which relies heavily on third-party cookies for tracking and targeting, pushed back against the proposed timeline, fearful of the disruption to the advertising ecosystem and loss of revenue.
3. Regulatory Pressures: Google faced regulatory scrutiny over its Privacy Sandbox initiative in the UK and EU into whether proposed plans would be harmful to competition and give Google an unfair advantage in the digital advertising space.
4. User Experience Considerations: While privacy is important, Google also had to consider the user experience. Many websites and services are ‘free’ to end users because they are funded by advertising; therefore, without effective advertising, these services would suffer. A more nuanced approach was required to balance user privacy with the need for websites to generate revenue.

As an alternative, Google has proposed introducing a new one-time prompt within Chrome that will allow people to make an informed choice that will apply to users’ web browsing. On the face of it, this sounds like Apple’s App Tracking Transparency Framework, which forces opt-in consent for tracking third-party apps on Apple Devices but has an opt-in rate of only around 30%.  So, whilst Google Chrome is hugely popular with nearly two-thirds of the market share, and third-party cookies will not be disappearing, the likely future take-up is only going to exacerbate an existing problem. 

Third-Party Cookies Are Long Dead

The fact of the matter is that the efficacy of cookies, both third-party and even first-party has been gradually eroded away for a long time. Back in 2017, both Apple and Mozilla announced that they would say goodbye to third-party cookies in their Safari and Mozilla browsers. Mozilla blocks third-party cookies by default, while Safari blocks third-party cookies and applies 7-day lifetime restrictions to some first-party cookies. 

On top of this, you also need to consider the increasing popularity of Adblocking and Cookie Banner Blocking extensions for web browsers, which are used by an estimated 30%-40% of web users.

Combined, all these countermeasures to cookies and tracking technologies have resulted in a significant dent in the volume and quality of the data that you as a digital marketer have at your disposal to get insights on your website performance in Google Analytics or understand the return on your investment in Google Ads.

This is why Google states that it remains important for you to continue to invest in privacy-preserving alternatives to cookie-based technologies, but what does that mean?

The Way Forward

Whilst Google’s reversal on third-party cookies means that not everything is going to change overnight, if you have not already started testing privacy-preserving approaches to data and advertising, you will only see further diminishing returns in the future, so it’s time to start exploring new digital marketing strategies and technologies.

Now

• Clean Up: Now is the time to get your data implementations in order; not only will this clear out unnecessary technical debt, but it will also make future tracking interventions easier. A GTM audit can quickly identify unnecessary tags and dependencies and improve maintainability through reorganising container components and addressing naming scheme inconsistencies.
• Consent: Visitor consent and compliance will be critical going forward. If you do not have a Consent Management Platform in place, now is the time to get one. If you do have one, is it set up correctly alongside your tag management system to respect visitor consent choices and communicate how visitor data can be used?
• Analytics: Get your Google Analytics 4 implementation in shape and get familiar with the nuances of Consent Mode v2, as this can have a great impact on the data and insight that will be available to you.
• Campaigns: Similarly, get your Google Ads set up consistently and follow best practice conversion tracking practices. This will make taking advantage of durable signals such as Enhanced Conversions easier further down the line.

Next

• First-Party Data: Focus on building direct relationships with your users and collecting first-party data in a privacy-complaint manner. This could involve encouraging users to create accounts, subscribe to newsletters, or engage with content that allows for a value exchange for the collection of consented data. These are not new ideas, but you need to be more intentional about first-party data evolving into your most valuable asset in the post-cookie world.
• User Privacy: You need to work with your compliance team to review your approach to privacy compliance and data collection to keep it in step with the evolving data collection landscape and to communicate any changes transparently to visitors, for example, allowing the collection of anonymised data for modelling.
• Modelled Data: Increasing opt-out rates to cookies and tracking means that you are working with an ever-decreasing volume of observed data. Google has led the way in offering consent awareness in its analytics and advertising technologies to collect anonymised data, which is then modelled using machine learning algorithms to fill this data gap created by non-consenting visitors.
• Server-Side Tracking: Invest in your data collection by moving to Server-Side tagging to improve the accuracy of your tracking, reduce data gaps and legitimately counteract limitations imposed upon some first-party cookies. The Server-Side implementation also facilitates enhanced conversion tracking systems like Google’s Enhanced Conversions and Facebook Conversion API, not to mention being able to improve website performance and data governance.
• Attribution and Performance Measurement: Moving forward, the most successful approach to understanding marketing performance will be to leverage a combination of different methods, including attribution, marketing mix modelling and experimentation and testing.

Future

• Build a First-Party Strategy: Place first-party data at the centre of your digital marketing strategy to maximise collection and activation across your business use cases.
• Keep Abreast of Industry Trends: Stay informed about industry news, updates on privacy changes, data collection and management practices and new marketing technologies.
• Embrace Agility: Be ready to change your strategy and prioritise new measures as new tools and regulations present themselves.

Conclusion

Google’s decision to retain third-party cookies in Chrome reflects the complexities of balancing user privacy with the needs of the digital advertising industry. However, for your digital marketing to remain relevant, you need to embrace the opportunities that first-party data, user privacy and privacy-preserving technologies present.

If you are looking for a digital partner to help you with your first-party digital strategy or need expertise in privacy-preserving implementations, contact us here at Mando Group to find out how we can help you.