Last week, Google Chrome announced a vision for a future without third-party cookies. Cookies have been used for years to improve the online experience, retain login information, serve relevant ads, measure advertising effectiveness and more.
More than two-thirds of all desktop web browser traffic and slightly less than half of all mobile traffic currently runs through Google Chrome. Not surprisingly, last week’s news quickly reverberated across the digital media industry. From those who have opined that this will mean the end of digital advertising technology to thought leaders who greeted the news with a collective shrug, the industry has had a loud and varied response.
What’s the news?
Google has announced a vision for a future without third-party cookies, achieved through a set of new open standards and industry collaboration over the next couple of years. The goal is to enable legitimate advertising and measurement use cases for the ad-supported web while protecting consumer privacy. Crossix supports the direction and applauds Google for choosing to pursue this goal through open standards and not Google-specific solutions.
What’s changing and when?
While Google has provided a two-year timeframe for when they would like the industry to evolve, nothing has actually happened yet. Today, third-party cookies are a critical part of the business model of the Internet, but it is time to evolve to a better, privacy-safe solution for targeting, measurement and other legitimate applications.
Nothing will change in the short and medium term as the industry pursues this future state and publishers, advertisers and intermediaries adjust.
Who will be impacted by long-term changes to third-party cookies?
Pretty much everyone. Anyone who publishes digital content, advertises online or uses the internet could potentially be impacted by changes to the infrastructure of third-party cookies. A tremendous amount of money is tied to the targeting and measurement tools currently enabled by third-party cookies. In fact, Google’s own analytics indicated that publisher revenue would go down 52% without third-party cookies in place. Users, publishers and advertisers all deserve a seat at the table and should help shape the solution over the next few years.
It’s important that Google – together with advertisers and the advertising technology industry – gets this right.
What’s next?
Looking forward, we believe a phase-out of third-party cookies presents an opportunity for the industry to upgrade to better, privacy-safe solutions.
Crossix has designed our technology to adapt to many different processes and workflows. In our 15-year company history, we have a proven track record of innovation, and we have continued to improve our solutions as digital advertising technology changes and evolves. Our measurement solutions evolved from research panels, expanding to publisher-based panels, to cookies, eventually adding mobile and IP-based tracking. Moving forward, we will adapt our solutions as new digital advertising technology is developed by the industry.
Crossix remains committed to our core mission of providing privacy-safe analytics to our clients and, together with our partners, we will embrace the coming changes while continuing to help biopharma brands maximize the effectiveness of their marketing investments.