By Scott Klein, Chief Innovation Officer, Pixability
When Google’s ‘A new path for Privacy Sandbox on the web’ blog post about Chrome no longer deprecating third-party cookie was published a few weeks back, industry leaders–representing publishers and advertisers–all breathed a collective sigh of relief, hoping that the nightmare of third-party cookie deprecation was behind them. Unfortunately, that’s probably premature. Marketers should absolutely still be preparing for a privacy durable future, and here’s why.
In his blog post, Anthony Chavez says that Google is going to give users a choice to enable or disable third-party cookies across their entire Chrome experience. But what does that mean? Let’s take a look at the two extremes of that choice to put it in context. In the first extreme, every user decides to disable third-party cookies. The effect on the ad industry would be identical to the planned deprecation of third-party cookies. In the opposite extreme, every user decides to enable third-party cookies, in which case nothing has changed (and we have collectively wasted hundreds of millions of dollars just talking about it!).
Neither of these extremes will be realized of course. The answer is somewhere in between and the final impact to the industry won’t be understood until we better understand future user behavior (which means we actually have less clarity on the future of our industry then we did before the reversal of cookie deprecation). However, can we look at any historic data to estimate where the user may land? A few interesting data points to consider.
- 95% of iOS users opt-out of ad tracking across apps when given the choice
- 68% of users do not accept website cookie disclosures (though this varies greatly by region, with users in Poland for example not accepting website disclosures just 36% of the time)[1]
If we use these data points, we can estimate that between ~70% and 95% of users will end up disabling 3rd party cookies by choice. Even the low end of that estimate (~70%) would result in a fraction of the existing addressable supply, thus having essentially the same impact as disabling third-party cookies altogether.
So what should marketers do about this anticipated outcome?
- If YouTube isn’t already part of your marketing strategy, then you should prioritize incorporating it. Google is the largest publisher in the world and has the most 1st party data–so it’s less reliant on cookies anyway. Its suite of products including GMail, Google Home, Google TV, Google Pay, Google Analytics, Google Search, etc. have positioned Google apart from all other publishers. Integration into this ecosystem is a must and should be on the top of your priority list.
- If you have started developing privacy durable solutions, stay on course or even accelerate your solution! Provide a value proposition for potential customers to provide their first party data such as product newsletters, product discounts, or loyalty programs. All of these provide an opportunity to engage with your customers.
- If you haven’t started considering privacy durable solutions, then start as soon as you can. Google’s announcement will cause a delay in the inevitable so use this new found time wisely. Embrace privacy durable solutions and engage with publishers that have the most first-party scale to get the most value out of the investment.
Ultimately, we can all breathe a brief sigh of relief that the “cookiepocalypse” isn’t happening in the drastic “flick-the-switch” way it was originally planned. But this probably won’t change the inevitability that we’ll still see a slow, user-driven move to a cookieless world. Regardless of the recent news from Google, every marketer would still be well served to proceed onward with their plans to prepare for a privacy durable future. The data speaks for itself. As some might say, although it’s not happening tomorrow, “winter is still coming.”
[1] https://business.yougov.com/content/37531-global-cookies-disclosures-behavior-survey
