Google announced, last week in their Chrome blog, their next step towards phasing out third party cookies in their browser. Tracking protection, as it is called, is the new feature that will limit cross-site tracking by restricting website access to third party cookies by default. And they will be rolling it out 1 percent of Chrome users globally on 4th January, 2024. Google plans to completely phase out the use of third-party cookies for users in the second half of 2024. This 1 percent population is selected randomly and those who are selected will be notified when they open Chrome on either desktop or Android. I sincerely wish, I am one of those chosen ones.
There are some significant points to be noted from this announcement. Firstly, these are third party cookies, not first party cookies owned by the website or the publisher. Secondly, the option to delete these cookies was always available to the user but that was not the default option, but now the choice is with the user to allow third party tracking. Thirdly, the user can allow it temporarily only, which means every time, you visit the website, you will have to allow third party tracking. Third-party cookies have been a fundamental part of the web for nearly three decades. While they can be used to track your website activities, sites have also used them to support a range of online experiences — like helping you log in or showing you relevant ads.
To be honest, 1 percent of the randomly chosen consumers globally, will not make any difference to any advertiser. They will not even feel a pinch. But it has far reaching implications for marketers in totally different perspective. On the contrary, Google will learn a lot from this experiment, as regards to user experience. How does the log in experience change? What were the ads shown earlier on these websites and how does that change? For some of the publishers, who were relying totally on third party tracking and those who did not invest in building in their own first party cookies (read them as junk publishers OR made for advertising sites) Google will be able to assess how the user behaviour changes. These learnings will help Google provide new tools for publishers and developers to help grow their business.
Google gave all the stakeholders of the ad tech ecosystem, almost nearly two full years to join them in what they called as “opt in testing” under the Privacy Sandbox Initiatives, which concluded last quarter. After giving a testing period of nearly three months, it is now officially signing off on the deprecation of third party trackers on Chrome. While the Privacy Sandbox Initiative is on a larger canvas of consumer privacy, with reference to advertising and marketing, there are three programs that are eagerly watched and debated. First and foremost is “interest based advertising” called as Topics API that helps advertisers with topics that the page visitor might be interested in. TopicsAPI is now fully ready and are available. Second is in the area of “remarketing and custom audiences” called as “Protected Audience API” that helps advertisers serve relevant ads from websites the user has previously visited.
Both TopicsAPI and Protected Audience API are publicly available for developers. One of the biggest challenge for advertisers is going to be aligning these two APIs with what they have from other walled gardens and how these APIs are going to be consistent across other gardens in identifying common interests or a cross platform remarketing program. This challenge becomes even more acute when we look at the third program that is on attribution and measurement. Attribution Reporting API enables advertisers to measure conversions across clicks and views in a privacy compliant manner. Essentially, Privacy Sandbox, while on the one hand offered the industry an opportunity to collaborate with them, on the other hand, it has ensured that the Chrome Walled Garden has just become a Concrete Jungle.
It is not the 1 percent that is going to pinch the marketers. It is those three programs viz., TopicsAPI, Protective Audience API and Attribution API and how it works that needs to be understood. And the marketers have one full year to replicate the same OR bring some consistency to these three programs across all the other walled gardens, so that they can compare and contrast them. How I wish, I am 20 years younger and have joined media planning during this time! The sheer thought of building a model that is able to compare and contrast these three programs across multiple walled gardens, gives me goose bumps.
Gowthaman Ragothaman is a 30-year media, advertising and marketing professional and CEO of Aqilliz, a blockchain solutions company for the marketing industry. Views expressed are personal.