The whispers started years ago: Google was going to rock the digital marketing world by sunsetting third-party cookies.
Every year for the past five years, ad publications have covered the trials, announced the delays, and speculated on what this meant for the future of ad measurement. Was this the final nail in the coffin for user-level ad targeting? Was it time to look for alternate solutions that didn’t rely on pixels and user IDs?
This was all leading up to this week when Google made the shocking declaration that it was canceling its plan to deprecate cookies. But is this really a win for advertisers?
With all of the back-and-forth on this issue, it's easy to get caught in the ‘Cookiepocalypse’ and lose sight of the bigger picture. Let’s zoom out for a minute and focus on understanding the importance of cookies today and how they affect ad targeting and measurement in a cross-channel world.
Why Did Google Consider Deprecating Cookies in the First Place?
So, how did all this start?
Simply put, user privacy has become non-negotiable in recent years. Users are increasingly uncomfortable with their online activity being tracked across websites.
Lawmakers, in turn, began implementing regulations like GDPR in Europe and CCPA in California to give users more control over their data. These privacy laws have had a significant impact on how businesses collect and use customer data. Check out our timeline of defining moments in media measurement for a thorough breakdown here.
These factors led to Google’s decision to sunset cookies, following in the footsteps of Firefox and Safari. When first announced, it sent advertisers scrambling for alternate ad targeting solutions, but that was then.
The marketing world has changed drastically since Google first made waves about this potential change years ago, and today, the ecosystem is much less reliant on Google Chrome cookies.
The Rise of the Walled Gardens
The marketing landscape has been quietly but rigorously evolving. Platforms like Meta, TikTok, and Snap were busy building their own "walled gardens."
Within these walled gardens, users voluntarily share data that's used for advertising (think about how much information you happily hand over when creating a Facebook profile). This first-party data quickly became incredibly valuable. Paid media strategies have also had to evolve in this landscape.
These platforms don't rely on third-party browser cookies for ad targeting, rendering them unaffected by Google’s decision on whether they keep them or not. They control both the data and the advertising space within their platforms, creating a somewhat closed-loop system.
This has raised concerns about competition, with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and other regulatory bodies investigating the potential impact on the digital advertising market.
These concerns aside, the majority of advertising spend today is allocated to these walled gardens. In fact, walled gardens accounted for more than $7 of every $10 of global digital ad spend recently. Cookie-based ad targeting makes up a fraction of ad dollars, and Google’s decision impacts only this tiny amount.
Other Implications and Considerations of Third-Party Cookies
You might be wondering, what about Google's ad targeting? It's safe to say Google would have negated the impact of the Chrome cookie deprecation on its own ad business, so it likely has minimal effect there as well.
Perhaps most importantly, Google has signaled that users will retain the ability to opt out of tracking - and if we’ve learned anything from iOS 14.5, it’s that users are eager to opt out of browser tracking. It's time to adapt!
How Does Google’s Decision Impact Media Measurement?
Essentially, it doesn’t.
The decision not to crumble cookies doesn't change much for marketers looking to measure the effectiveness of their media.
Even though they may be leveraged in Google’s systems, since third-party cookies aren’t relevant to ad targeting across the walled garden ecosystem, the same challenge remains when you need to measure cross-channel performance holistically. A decade ago, the go-to methodology was multi-touch attribution (MTA), which involved tracking users across the web using user-identifying data like cookies. Higher concentrations of walled garden ad spend, along with the impending loss of user tracking data, made these methods of attribution unreliable for connecting media spend to business outcomes.
As the final blow to these methodologies, the introduction of Apple iOS 14.5 and App Tracking Transparency (ATT) broke platform conversion tracking by forcing apps to request permission to track users, and Apple certainly isn't going back to pre-iOS 14.
As such, neutral, privacy-proof measurement is still necessary to understand the true value of your media spend across all channels. With or without Chrome cookies, marketers must embrace broadly applicable measurement solutions that don’t rely on user tracking if they want to be able to make decisions with confidence and drive business results. To see how Measured can be that solution for your brand, set up a platform demo today.