Google Chrome Won’t be Deprecating Cookies — Yet

In Forrester’s 2024 Marketing Survey, over 60% of respondents said that they didn’t actually believe that Google would deprecate third-party cookies. 

And it seems that these respondents were correct — for now. 

After years of fighting with advertisers and regulators, Google has officially reversed its decision to deprecate cookies on Google Chrome. 

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• Why would Google deprecate cookies in the first place? 
• Where did the pushback come from? 
• Why does this decision matter? 
• What does this mean for marketers? 

Why would Google deprecate cookies in the first place? 

Google announced its plans to deprecate cookies all the way back in 2020. The motivation for this plan involves a broader understanding of privacy concerns and regulatory pressures. 

Privacy — especially digital privacy — has been a hot-button issue over the past five years. With a growing number of data breaches and increasing awareness of how personal information is used online, consumers have become increasingly concerned about their privacy. Governments around the world have responded by imposing more stringent data protection regulations that limit the way that corporations and other actors can collect data from users in digital spaces.

These regulations include the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the United States, among others. These regulations place limits on how personal information can be collected, stored, and used, and place hefty fines on organizations that violate these rules. 

Amid this environment, privacy-focused browsers like Mozilla Firefox have drawn consumers through measures to block third party cookies. Third party cookies allow companies to track what you do not just on their own website (first party cookies) but on other websites as well. 

For example: you visit a sunglasses website and then you start to see targeted ads on Google for the same sunglasses store. To put it simply, companies use third party cookies to target consumers based on their interests. 

In response to increasing regulation and consumer pressure, Google announced its Privacy Sandbox initiative in 2019. The initiative’s goal was to enhance user privacy while simultaneously enabling advertisers to reach consumers in new and different ways. As part of this initiative, cookies were initially going to be phased out by 2022, then later 2023, and now deprecation has been indefinitely delayed. 

Where did the pushback come from?

Despite Google’s best intentions to make both consumers and advertisers happy, the road to deprecating third party cookies has been fraught with challenges. 

Third party cookies are a cornerstone of digital advertising. Without them, advertisers can’t easily target the right audience at the right time to drive purchases. They won’t be able to deliver highly-targeted ads based on a user’s online behavior, or build out robust and detailed user profiles. Deprecating how advertisers get the data that informs their strategy makes the job of marketing that much more complex. It may reduce revenue and increase spend dramatically, at least in the short-term. 

Ironically, some regulators also expressed concerns that Google’s plan would further entrench their dominance in the digital advertising space. By eliminating third party cookies, advertisers may be forced to rely even more on Google’s own advertising tools and data. This is a complex situation that highlights the opposing forces of privacy, competition, and market dynamics. 

Finally, finding something to replace third party cookies while still retaining consumer privacy is just difficult. There have been some proposed solutions, like Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoCs) and Topics, but they have each faced their own criticisms and potential risks. The current alternative is a user-choice prompt that allows users to select their preferred level of online tracking. This is similar to the changes and challenges that iOS 14 introduced to the marketing landscape in 2020. And like iOS 14, user-choice prompts may be disruptive to markers that rely on cookies. Marketing intelligence platforms like Northbeam minimize this disruption to nearly zero — more on that later. 

Why does this decision matter?

Google’s decision to reverse its stance on third party cookies has significant implications for nearly all stakeholders in the digital ecosystem. 

For advertisers, the continuation of third party cookies is a temporary relief. They can continue to use established methods for ad targeting and measurement for the time being. However, their search for effective alternatives should continue, and advertisers would be wise to stay engaged in ongoing discussion and developments. 

For ad publishers like LinkedIn and Facebook, the decision is also a relief. They can maintain their revenue models without the immediate need to overhaul their advertising strategies. Because they rely primarily on ad revenue, this stability in the short-term is crucial. This is especially true for platforms that rely on ad revenue to provide free content to users. 

For consumers, the impact is more nuanced. While the continuation of third party cookies means that cross-site tracking of personal information and activity will persist, consumers can also continue to benefit from the aforementioned free content powered by ad revenue. Ideally, having more time to develop adequate privacy solutions will allow this content to remain free while better protecting consumer data protection rights online. 

For regulators, the job of scrutinizing the digital advertising landscape and the actions of dominant players like Google continues. The interplay between privacy, competition, and innovation is delicate and will require ongoing attention and potential regulatory adjustments and advancements.

What does this mean for data intelligence platforms? 

Back in January, we wrote an explainer about what cookie deprecation would mean for data intelligence platforms like Northbeam. 

Our short answer was: it won’t mean much. While some data intelligence and analytics platforms will be significantly hampered in their ability to deliver value without the use of third party cookies, Northbeam has a future-proof machine learning algorithm that mostly bypasses the need for third party cookies altogether. 

Read More: What is Marketing Intelligence Software?

We ran internal holdout tests to determine how the removal of cookies would impact our modeling outputs, and found that 98% of our data was unaffected. 

"Years ago, when we were starting Northbeam, we knew this was coming,” said Austin Harrison, CEO and co-founder of Northbeam. “Google's been telling us for years they were going to do away with cookies, so preparing for that future has been our mission. It's not just about cookies, it's about advertising more effectively in a more privacy-minded era. That's what we're about."

Northbeam prioritizes first party data to resolve customer identities and solve for the deprecation of cookies — without impacting the level of intelligence that our users receive. 

Read more here: How Will Cookie Deprecation Affect Northbeam? An Explainer.

What does this mean for marketers? 

With Google’s decision not to deprecate third party cookies, marketers face both familiar and new challenges. 

On one hand, they can continue to leverage these cookies for targeted advertising and measurement. This continuity creates stability and strategic benefits for campaign planning, performance tracking, and budgeting. 

On the other hand, this is only a temporary reprieve. Changes are coming, and marketers must remain adaptable. The delay in cookie deprecation doesn’t mean the world isn’t shifting towards increasing user privacy online. Marketers will need to stay up-to-date on changes and act proactively to maintain their bottom line. 

Marketers should use this time to explore and experiment with alternate targeting methods. Understanding these technologies will best position marketers to perform well when changes inevitably do arrive. Digital privacy innovation can also telegraph well to privacy-focused consumers who want their brands to act in alignment with their values. Ethical data handling will be critical to maintain brand reputation and customer loyalty in the future. 

By embracing innovation, fostering transparency, and prioritizing consumer trust, marketers can set themselves up for success — and set themselves apart — in a future where privacy and marketing success are no longer at odds.