Google Not To Deprecate Third Party Cookies In Chrome

Google has decided not to deprecate, do away with, third-party cookies in Chrome. This is something Google has been planning and testing for a while, delaying the efforts numerous times, and now ultimately deciding to scrap those efforts.

Google wrote, “Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time.”

“We’re discussing this new path with regulators, and will engage with the industry as we roll this out,” Google added. “As this moves forward, it remains important for developers to have privacy-preserving alternatives. We’ll continue to make the Privacy Sandbox APIs available and invest in them to further improve privacy and utility. We also intend to offer additional privacy controls, so we plan to introduce IP Protection into Chrome’s Incognito mode,” Google wrote.

Google posted the test results of these efforts:

• Scale preservation: For advertiser spend—a proxy for scale—we saw an 89% recovery in Google Display Ads and an 86% recovery in Display & Video 360.
• Return on investment (ROI): For campaigns focused on conversions only, we saw a 97% recovery in conversions per dollar (CPD)—a proxy for ROI—in Google Display Ads, and a 95% CPD recovery in Display & Video 360.
• Remarketing recovery: Across campaigns using only remarketing audiences, our experiment showed a 55% advertiser spend recovery in Google Ads and 49% in Display & Video 360.3 These results are likely because remarketing today is more reliant on third-party cookies which enable a highly precise level of ads personalization, and the eligible inventory is limited because few supply side platforms (SSPs) are currently testing the Privacy Sandbox. In terms of CPD, we saw some outliers that we’ll continue to monitor. The recovery was generally better for campaigns that use a combination of remarketing audiences and other strategies like in-market-, affinity audiences, and optimized targeting.4 This suggests that advertisers may benefit from adopting a combination of audience solutions for customer re-engagement. We encourage you to read the whitepaper for more details.

Kayleigh Barber and Seb Joseph from Digiday wrote, “Still, knowing that the Sandbox isn’t the be-all and end-all of Google’s plan for third-party addressability will have ad execs breathing a sigh of relief. They’ve been scratching their heads trying to figure out how this could all play out. Somewhere between announcing the plan to ditch third-party cookies in Chrome four years ago and now, Google’s strategy got tangled between pleasing privacy advocates and keeping ad performance (and monetization) humming for the ad industry.”

More Google testing showed, “the Privacy Sandbox APIs created an incremental 13% uplift for publishers on Google Ad Manager and 3% uplift for publishers on Google AdSense. Note that the numbers do not add up to 100% due to rounding of individual figures.”

• Programmatic revenue impact without Privacy Sandbox: By comparing the control 2 arm to the control 1 arm, we observed that removing third-party cookies without enabling Privacy Sandbox led to -34% programmatic revenue for publishers on Google Ad Manager and -21% programmatic revenue for publishers on Google AdSense.
• Programmatic revenue impact with Privacy Sandbox: By comparing the treatment arm to control 1 arm, we observed that removing third-party cookies while enabling the Privacy Sandbox APIs led to -20% and -18% programmatic revenue for Google Ad Manager and Google AdSense publishers, respectively.

Here are some reactions:

I’d **** to know what caused Chrome to back away from this, given that Safari did it years ago. It looks really bad.

— Jake Archibald (@jaffathecake) July 22, 2024

This is insane because by Google’s own accord, they met the CMA requirements:

“Early testing from ad tech companies, including Google, has indicated that the Privacy Sandbox APIs have the potential to achieve these outcomes. And we expect that overall performance using Privacy… https://t.co/DM4VgsfypQ

— Keith Petri 💾 (@keithepetri) July 22, 2024

What a turn of events. Huge news for everyone that spends digital ad dollars, big brands and small, who care about customer acquisition costs and data fidelity (and privacy) moving forward. https://t.co/BSFcMghAWn

— Michael J. Miraflor (@michaelmiraflor) July 22, 2024

so google just gave up on what was meant to be the big move away from tracking cookies after all. Ah! Nevertheless, https://t.co/qYSZ1MM9xU

— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) July 22, 2024

But let’s face it, the quality of 3PC data was already a sinking ship.

Now, with them potentially being front and center again, the decline will likely accelerate.

This delay also feels like Google might be taking a backseat in developing more privacy-focused solutions.

— Boris Beceric (@BorisBeceric) July 23, 2024

Of course, the Google Ads advertiser interface is not updated:

So you are telling me that this message in the Google Ads UI is not relevant anymore? 😅 What are your takes on this whole story #ppcchat?

I’m curious how this will unfold from Google’s side. pic.twitter.com/POzQJB9NkG

— Alfred Simon (@AlfredSimon) July 23, 2024

Plus a lot more coverage of this news over here – this was not really expected and the marketing world is kind of exploding on this news.

Forum discussion at X.