On the 22nd July 2024 Anthony Chavez (VP of Privacy Sandbox from Google) announced that Google Chrome’s deprecation of third-party cookies is no longer going ahead as originally planned.
Instead of Chrome forcefully disabling third-party cookies in 2025 (originally 2024), it is going to be optional through a popup in Chrome that enables users to use the Privacy Sandbox (Google’s own alternative to preserve ad measurement without third-party cookies) features instead.
It’s not too shocking that Google has changed their approach given the challenges that they’ve faced due to their dominance in advertising and internet browser spaces. In recent years, Google has been scrutinised by the UK’s Competition Markets Authority for proposing changes which could have unfairly impacted competitor advertising networks.
Google have faced challenges from several parties in both advertising and attribution. There are a lack of suitable alternatives, which means that changes to user tracking could impact independent ad tech and shift the landscape to benefit Google
What’s next for Privacy Sandbox?
Whilst the forced deprecation has been cancelled, Google will still be offering users the ability to Opt-in to the Privacy Sandbox, which they are dedicated to improving with features such as IP Masking in Incognito Mode.
It will be interesting to see what else google plan to do with this feature, and whether it could borrow more from Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) and Edge’s Tracking prevention (TP).
At this point, a key unknown is what percentage of users will be offered to opt-in to the feature, and whether those who already have are given another chance to opt-out without digging through Chrome’s settings.
What’s next for advertisers?
It's worth noting that third-party cookie deprecation isn’t something that Google has been at the forefront of - both Safari and Firefox have already been doing it for years. The degradation of accurate tracking from the uptake in Cookie Banners since 2018, when GDPR came into effect, are just milestones in a journey of more informed and consented tracking that respects user privacy.
So, whilst Google Chrome is no longer deprecating third-party cookies, it’s still crucial for advertisers to review and look at adopting technologies such as:
- Google Ads Enhanced Conversions & Facebook Conversions API – Improving the match rate of impression > click > site visit > conversion through sharing first-party data with Google and Facebook
- Google Consent Mode v2 Advanced – Cookie-less tracking that benefits several Google products with visibility of opt-out users, for improved modelling to fill the gap left by opt-out users
- Google Server-Side Google Tag Manager – Use more durable user identifiers on your Website and App and also route tracking requests through your own infrastructure for improved privacy and website performance
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