Google’s pushing back plans to drop support for third-party cookies on Chrome, which means you’ve got a bit of breathing room if you rely on them for your marketing needs.
What are third-party cookies?
Put simply, third-party cookies are cookies that are placed on a website by someone other than the owner and gather data for that third party. A good example of this is a retargeting cookie – if you look at a TV on a website, but don’t buy it, you may then see adverts related to that TV pop up on other websites.
What would Google’s changes mean?
Without the ability to monetise data, the internet as we know it wouldn’t be open and accessible. So it’s important for marketers and retailers to be able to advertise. Therefore, Google isn’t necessarily planning on getting rid of ways to reach people – it is, however, trying to find ways of doing so that don’t rely on personally identifying individuals or fingerprinting your hardware. This is part of what they’re calling ‘the Privacy Sandbox’.
We don’t know exactly what all of these initiatives Google is doing are, but they have allocated extra time for testing. They’ve also announced some plans for a Federated Learning of Cohorts (or FLoC), which is their potential alternative to third-party cookies.
When will third-party cookies need to change?
Google is now planning on phasing out third-party cookies from Chrome completely by the end of 2023. As an estimated 2.65 billion internet users have Chrome as their primary browser, either on their phones or desktop, that’s a significant chunk of the global population. There’s no doubt that other browsers will follow suit – especially as Safari and Firefox bill themselves as privacy-focused.
So, you will need to ensure your website is kept up to date and keep abreast of any changes to marketing pixels and cookies. If you use Facebook pixels, LinkedIn tags or anything similar, don’t panic – each platform will let you know what’s happening and what you need to update!
If that all sounds a bit too much to keep on top of, chat to us – we’ll handle all your social media advertising needs, including the technology that keeps it running. Visit our services page to find out more.
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