fifty-five | Privacy

Google's U-turn on third-party cookies 🍪

On July 22nd, Google made headlines with a significant shift in its strategy by reversing its initial plan to fully eliminate third-party cookies from its Chrome browser. This decision has come as a relief to many in the digital marketing and advertising industries, as the ecosystem wasn’t fully prepared to navigate a cookie-less future.

How does this affect the digital marketing landscape?
For many businesses, this reversal is a chance to breathe. The postponement offers extra time to explore and implement privacy-first solutions without compromising current marketing strategies. Marketers can now focus on building first-party data strategies and refining contextual advertising methods to prepare for the inevitable cookie-less future.

What should businesses do next?
This U-turn from Google should not be seen as a permanent solution but rather a critical window of opportunity. Now is the time for companies to invest in sustainable, privacy-focused technologies and continue innovating to ensure long-term readiness when third-party cookies are eventually phased out.

Want to dive deeper?

In his latest article, Matthieu Gilli, Associate Director at fifty-five, explores the impact of this transition. With Chrome holding nearly 65% of the market share, Google's decision to allow users to choose whether or not to accept third-party cookies could significantly disrupt digital marketing. He identifies four major challenges in building a robust first-party data asset, focusing on transparent data collection and personalized user experiences, all of which require strategies tailored to new market realities. Discover his full analysis on the tea house blog.

INTRODUCTION

At fifty-five, we are committed to guiding our customers and leading the market through the end of the cookie era. The deprecation of third-party cookies majorly impacts both measurement and activation in the marketing field; to anticipate and address new challenges in the best possible way, a clearly defined post-third-party cookie strategy is paramount.

Whether you find yourself at the discovery stage, still taking in the major changes linked to the end of third-party cookies, or ready to seize the opportunities offered by the new data collection tools on the market, you can find helpful resources on this page dedicated to post-cookie readiness.

BEFORE WE START

While the resources listed below will help you tackle the cookieless era through e-books, dedicated articles, use cases, and more, let’s first examine what the end of third-party cookies implies.

Third-party cookies have always been the alpha and omega of digital marketing for advertising targeting. Enabling user tracking on the web, these small text files were read, shared, and sold between different actors for decades. But today, collective awareness around invasive tracking practices and privacy has led to their gradual disappearance.

As this cornerstone of digital marketing vanishes, its disappearance is mostly felt by advertisers, whose ability to achieve effective activation is compromised.

Indeed, how does one personalize content for a website visitor on the open web or maintain controlled advertising pressure on an individual? Can audience lists still be shared with partners?

For the nascent cookieless era, no standards are yet set. Still, plenty of solutions exist to fill the void left by the disappearance of third-party cookies. All you need to do is find the one best suited for you.