Over the years, ad targeting campaigns have continuously improved to better align with individual interests and optimize advertiser ROI. This progress has been made possible thanks to navigation data, which help understand consumers and their purchase intentions, but raise controversies regarding personal data privacy. The announced removal of third-party cookies by Google in 2022 on its Chrome browser has sparked many questions and concerns among advertisers.
Are we witnessing a step backwards, returning to advertising without real targeting capabilities? What impact will this removal have on campaign performance? How to prepare for these changes? This article aims to provide viable answers that digital marketing professionals have been exploring for months.
Understanding the Third-Party Cookie Ecosystem
Before diving into alternatives, it's crucial to understand what we're losing. Third-party cookies have been the backbone of digital advertising for over two decades, enabling cross-site tracking and creating detailed user profiles across the web. These small text files allowed advertisers to follow users from one website to another, building comprehensive behavioral profiles that powered sophisticated targeting and retargeting campaigns.
The cookie-based advertising ecosystem generated approximately $455 billion in global digital ad revenue in 2021, with programmatic advertising accounting for nearly 88% of all digital display ad spending in the United States. This massive industry now faces a fundamental transformation that affects everyone from small e-commerce businesses to major advertising platforms.
Why Are Third-Party Cookies Disappearing?
The removal isn't happening in isolation. Consumer awareness about data privacy has reached unprecedented levels, with 86% of consumers expressing concerns about data privacy according to recent studies. Regulatory frameworks like GDPR in Europe and CCPA in California have established new standards for data protection, while tech giants face increasing pressure to demonstrate privacy leadership.
Safari blocked third-party cookies by default in 2017, followed by Firefox in 2019. Google's Chrome, controlling approximately 65% of the global browser market, initially planned the phase-out for 2022 but has since extended the timeline to 2024, recognizing the complexity of transitioning such a massive ecosystem.
Targeting: From Individual to Collective
One of the main changes brought by the removal of third-party cookies concerns the way campaigns are targeted.
Today, targeting approaches focus on the individual, considering socio-demographic attributes (gender, age, location, socio-professional category...) and interests deduced from browsing behavior. Thus, advertisers can propose their products and services to internet users likely to be interested in their offer: a children's clothing brand can target a parent audience for acquisition, and retarget users who visited its site to boost conversion.
What will happen with the removal of cookies? Rest assured, alternative technologies are ready to take over to help advertisers maintain the relevance of their ads, while preserving users' privacy.
Google's Privacy Sandbox: The FLoC Evolution
For several months now, interest-based advertising by cohorts (FLoC, Federated Learning of Cohorts) seemed promising. However, Google has since evolved this approach into the Topics API, which represents a more refined solution to privacy-preserving advertising.
The Topics API works by having the browser observe user activity and assign them to interest categories (topics) based on their browsing behavior. Instead of sharing detailed individual profiles, the system shares only three topics from the user's recent browsing history. Early testing has shown that Topics-based campaigns can achieve 95% of the performance of cookie-based targeting for certain advertiser segments.
Cohort-Based Targeting in Practice
Consider a practical example: Instead of targeting "John, 34, married, interested in luxury watches and lives in Manhattan," advertisers would target "Cohort #4,832: Users aged 30-40, interested in luxury goods, urban professionals." This approach maintains targeting effectiveness while protecting individual privacy through anonymization within larger groups.
Early adopters testing cohort-based approaches report conversion rates within 85-92% of their cookie-based campaigns, with performance improving as algorithms learn to optimize for these new targeting methods.
Cookies Are Dead... Long Live Cookies!
What about other uses? Good news for advertisers: the end of third-party cookies does not mean the end of all cookies or all tracking technologies. First-party cookies, which allow brands and media to collect data from their own users (declarative, navigation, purchase data, etc.) remain a real added value for their activity.
If soon a brand will no longer be able to rely on third-party data, it will be in its interest to invest in its own data by enriching its customer knowledge and user base. Implementing collection operations, in-store or online, is one way to prepare for this shift.
The Rise of First-Party Data Strategy
Forward-thinking brands are already investing heavily in first-party data collection and management. First-party data includes information directly collected from customers through websites, apps, surveys, purchase history, and customer service interactions. This data is not only immune to cookie deprecation but often provides higher quality insights than third-party alternatives.
Companies with robust first-party data strategies are seeing impressive results. For instance, retail brands implementing comprehensive data collection through loyalty programs report 25-35% higher customer lifetime value compared to those relying primarily on third-party data.
Building Your First-Party Data Foundation
Successful first-party data strategies require multiple touchpoints:
- Website optimization: Implement progressive profiling, where users gradually share more information through valuable content exchanges
- Email marketing enhancement: Use behavioral triggers and preference centers to collect detailed user preferences
- Social media integration: Leverage social login options and engagement data to enrich customer profiles
- Mobile app development: Apps provide rich behavioral data and direct communication channels with users
- Offline-to-online bridging: Connect in-store purchases with digital profiles through loyalty programs and receipt matching
Alternative Technologies and Solutions
The advertising technology landscape is rapidly evolving to fill the void left by third-party cookies. Multiple solutions are emerging, each with distinct advantages and use cases.
Universal IDs and Identity Solutions
Universal ID solutions like The Trade Desk's Unified ID 2.0, LiveRamp's IdentityLink, and ID5's Universal ID create persistent identifiers based on hashed email addresses or phone numbers. These solutions require user consent but can provide cross-platform tracking capabilities similar to third-party cookies.
Early implementations show promising results, with advertisers reporting reach increases of 15-20% when using universal IDs compared to cookie-only campaigns. However, adoption requires coordination across the entire advertising ecosystem, from publishers to demand-side platforms.
Contextual Advertising Renaissance
Contextual advertising is experiencing a significant revival as marketers rediscover the power of content-based targeting. Instead of tracking users across sites, contextual advertising places relevant ads based on the content being consumed.
Modern contextual targeting goes far beyond simple keyword matching. Advanced AI and natural language processing analyze page content, sentiment, and context to make sophisticated targeting decisions. Automotive brands, for example, can target articles about car maintenance, travel content, or lifestyle pieces about suburban living.
Recent studies indicate that contextual advertising can achieve 70-80% of the performance of behavioral targeting while completely eliminating privacy concerns. Premium publishers report that contextual campaigns often outperform audience-based campaigns due to the alignment between content and advertising messaging.
Measuring Campaign Performance in a Cookie-Less World
Finally, another challenge brought by the blocking of third-party cookies is measuring campaign performance, especially attributing conversions among different activated levers. For this, implementing first-party or Server to Server (S2S) tags, not affected by removal measures, is one of the ways to ensure the relay of third-party cookies. This transition has likely already started several months ago for advertisers supported by agencies, as third-party cookies have already disappeared from Mozilla and Apple browsers.
Advanced Attribution Models
Marketing mix modeling (MMM) and incrementality testing are becoming essential tools for understanding campaign effectiveness. These statistical approaches analyze the correlation between advertising spend and business outcomes across all channels, providing insights that don't rely on individual user tracking.
Server-side tracking implementations are increasingly critical. By moving tracking logic to servers rather than browsers, advertisers can maintain more reliable data collection while respecting user privacy preferences. Companies implementing server-side tracking report 15-25% improvement in data accuracy compared to browser-based tracking alone.
Enhanced Conversion Tracking
Google's Enhanced Conversions and similar solutions from other platforms use first-party customer data to improve conversion measurement. By securely hashing customer information (email addresses, phone numbers) and matching it with ad interactions, advertisers can maintain conversion tracking accuracy even as traditional cookies disappear.
Practical Steps for Advertisers
Immediate Actions (0-3 months)
- Audit your current data collection: Identify all touchpoints where you collect customer information and assess data quality
- Implement server-side tracking: Begin transitioning critical measurement systems away from browser-dependent technologies
- Test Privacy Sandbox APIs: Start experimenting with Google's Topics API and other emerging technologies
- Enhance email capture strategies: Optimize newsletter signups, content gates, and value exchanges to grow your email list
Medium-term Strategy (3-12 months)
- Develop comprehensive loyalty programs: Create compelling reasons for customers to share data directly
- Invest in customer data platforms (CDPs): Implement technology to unify and activate first-party data across all channels
- Expand contextual advertising capabilities: Test and optimize contextual campaigns across your media mix
- Build cross-channel measurement frameworks: Implement attribution models that don't rely on individual tracking
Long-term Transformation (12+ months)
- Cultivate direct customer relationships: Invest in owned media channels like mobile apps, email, and SMS
- Develop predictive modeling capabilities: Use AI and machine learning to identify high-value prospects based on first-party data
- Create value-driven data exchanges: Build transparent programs where customers willingly share information for personalized benefits
- Establish privacy-first culture: Train teams on privacy-preserving marketing techniques and ethical data use
Industry Impact and Future Outlook
The transition away from third-party cookies represents more than a technical change—it's fundamentally reshaping the digital advertising industry. Smaller advertisers may face challenges competing with companies that have extensive first-party data resources, potentially leading to market consolidation.
However, this shift also creates opportunities for innovation. Publishers investing in first-party data and contextual capabilities are commanding premium pricing for their inventory. Advertisers focusing on customer relationships rather than anonymous tracking often see improved customer lifetime value and brand loyalty.
The cookieless future isn't a return to the past—it's an evolution toward more sustainable, privacy-respecting advertising practices that can build stronger connections between brands and consumers.
The online advertising sector is preparing for a major change. Despite concerns it may have raised, alternative solutions are already underway or in testing, allowing advertisers to go through these changes smoothly and with better protection of personal data. Success in this new landscape will require strategic thinking, technical adaptation, and a renewed focus on earning customer trust through valuable, relevant experiences.
Photo credits: freepik
