It’s time to get off the cookie rollercoaster.
For the better part of the last decade, we’ve been hearing about the ‘death of cookies’. While Safari rolled out Intelligent Tracking Protection in 2017 and Firefox limited third party cookies in 2019 — all eyes have been on Google to decide when they will change the cookie behavior of Chrome’s 63% market share.
We’re now in Season 5 of Google’s “will they or won’t they” reality show on cookie deprecation (Season 1: The 2019 announcement that cookies would be fully deprecated by 2022) — and the series finale has a major plot twist. This week, Google announced they’re shifting gears: rather than fully deprecating 3rd party cookies, users will be offered something similar to Apple’s iOS tracking optionality.
Many questions remain about implementation details, timelines, and regulatory approval. At this point, advertisers need to look past Google’s decision. Regardless of what Google decides, “cookieless” isn’t the future — it’s the present. CTV, now the dominant form of TV viewing, is cookieless. Mobile apps are cookieless. And the other major web browsers have been for some time.
Today’s question is how to best navigate that world — and advertisers need to ask more sophisticated questions than just what identifier they’re using. What does it mean to target a shared household device like a Connected TV? How does that change the message you select or the way you calibrate reach and frequency? As cookie-free IDs battle for dominance, all claim to be equally “addressable” — but how can you really validate the accuracy, and ensure that you’re delivering on-target media?
At BPI, we’ve long been at work on more durable methods of targeting and measurement — from building direct data clean rooms with major platforms to testing new forms of IDs. No matter what Google decides, we’ll be able to reach our clients’ audiences with more on-target media, sharper insights, and a complete picture of what they’re watching, seeing, and hearing — allowing us to run more effective and integrated campaigns. We’re excited to roll out a major upgrade to our tech stack on that front for planning, buying, and measurement in the coming months — stay tuned for more!
