By Head of Operations Gabby Krite
We’ve been discussing third-party cookies’ demise for quite a few years now and feel like somewhat of a broken record. Google has been dragging its feet for over two years regarding phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome, partially because of industry preparedness and because regulators are unsatisfied with their proposed alternatives.
In January this year, Google finally disabled 1% of third-party cookies, and we all thought, “This is it.” But then the date got pushed back again, and this week, in a complete surprise move, Google announced that it’s scrapping the deprecation. Is anyone else tearing their hair out, too?
Don’t worry—I don’t think it’s quite the U-turn that it sounds like. They are indeed scrapping the deprecation and instead introducing what sounds like a browser-level control of cookie preferences, allowing users to decline cookies at the browser level rather than for each site. The specifics are lacking at this stage, and Google has advised that they will “engage the industry as it rolls out.”
For clients who have updated their cookie banners to make opting out of cookies as easy as opting in, we’ve seen opt-in rates fall dramatically to as little as 20%. When Apple rolled out their IDFA, opt-out rates went to 85%. These examples tell us that most people don’t like cookies, so it’s likely that the new approach will lead to similar opt-out rates in Chrome. While cookies won’t disappear completely, they will be much less common, meaning the remaining cookies will become very valuable (and expensive) for advertisers.
It’s important to note that the CMA hasn’t approved this yet and will be working in collaboration with the ICO. Given Google’s history with the CMA, there’s no guarantee they will. The big question now is how tech partners will react—will they keep investing in cookieless products with this new development?
Considering this, we recommend continuing to test and implement cookieless solutions, as they will remain valuable regardless of the changes.