Third-Party Cookies Deprecation Impact on Advertisers Publishers and Marketers

As many of us know, Google is phasing out support for third-party cookies on its Chrome browser, which covers nearly 90 percent of the worlds internet users. This means it will have a significant impact on the digital world, and people are eager to find solutions. Google has already announced this for 1% of its overall users, affecting approx 30 million users.

How Will This Affect the Digital World?

The discontinuation of third-party cookies will affect the entire world, but brands, advertisers, agencies, and publishers will be particularly affected due to the financial impact on their businesses. Let's understand how this will affect everyone, starting with normal users.

Impact on User Experience:

As normal users, we might not realise immediately that something significant has changed following Googles announcement about third-party cookies.

When we search for something online and visit our favourite websites, we often notice that Google and other marketing platforms remember our interests and remind us about those websites repeatedly. This occurs due to remarketing strategies employed by brands and marketing platforms to encourage user engagement. This practice will be affected once third-party cookies are deprecated.

Impact on Brands and Marketers:

If you are a brand using digital marketing services for branding and user acquisition, you will be significantly impacted by this change. Let's delve into how.

Impact on personalisation and remarketing:

If you are running brand or performance campaigns for your products and services, you won't be able to retarget users, and marketing platforms won't have access to information from your website for retargeting. Most marketing platforms, except Google, will face severe impacts, although Google is working with brands and agencies to mitigate the loss of third-party cookies.

Impact on Attribution :

After third-party cookies are deprecated, marketing platforms like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and LinkedIn won't be able to access user behavior and conversion information from websites where pixels are placed. This will pose challenges for attributing conversions. However, Google is investing efforts in enhanced conversion and conversion modelling techniques to minimise the impact.

Impact on Third-Party Service Providers:

Third-party service providers that rely on third-party cookies for cross-website tracking and understanding user patterns will also face challenges.

The impact on Publishers:

Millions of publishers, both small and large, who monetise their content through ads, won't be able to provide targeted ads to users, leading to a drop in revenue. Its crucial for publishers to explore alternative ways to collect first-party data to track and analyse user behavior and personalise content to enhance ad revenue.

Conclusion:

The deprecation of third-party cookies will impact the entire industry, including advertisers, marketers, publishers, and the ad tech industry. They rely on third-party cookies for interconnected data collection. Without them, their operations will be severely affected.

Solution:

The primary solution to mitigate this issue is to rely on first-party data and establish communication using it in a privacy-first environment. Google is also working on solutions to minimise the impact of third-party cookie deprecation by utilising first-party data. Some solutions include:

• Continued use of first-party cookies on your website for tracking user behavior.
• Utilisation of Google's Privacy Sandbox tool to target users in Google ads.
• Adoption of new technologies like FloC, which track groups of people with common interests.
• Implementation of Enhanced Conversion & Conversion Modelling focusing on first-party data conversion tracking for more accurate data.
• Explore new and creative ways to gather and store information directly from your customers. Use this data to address privacy concerns and adapt to changes. You can do this by using existing customer data platforms or creating your own. These platforms can communicate with marketing tools to help you better understand and serve your customers while keeping their information safe.

By embracing these solutions, businesses can adapt to the changing landscape and continue effectively targeting and engaging with their audiences