Last year, Google announced changes to cookie settings as a way for them to prepare for larger cookie changes coming in 2020. Index Exchange has since updated our cookies to prepare for their release of Chrome 80 on February 4.
More recently, on January 14, Google revealed their longer-term intentions for a cookieless future via a blog post to phase out support for third-party cookies in Chrome within the next two years. As an alternative, they shared further details behind the Privacy Sandbox, a set of APIs designed to provide personalisation for advertising, while also protecting consumer privacy.
It’s the latest in a series of moves from browsers and regulators designed to safeguard consumer control and privacy, and we’re encouraged by this shared approach and direction.
The third-party cookie has served as a crutch for many years, and its deterioration marks a fundamental shift in the way our industry operates. It’s one of the reasons we’ve been investing so heavily in the addressability space. For the past three years, we’ve been striving to build a new foundation for our industry, one that is truly cookieless, addressable, and built on trust, crafting products like Publisher Sonar and Project Blackbird with this privacy-safe approach in mind.
This announcement coincides with that vision, supporting and justifying our long-held belief that the future of our industry will be rooted in people-based and privacy-first solutions (rather than brittle, black-box third-party data collection). It also provides our industry with a clear timeline and incentive to continue crafting solutions that promote collaboration, creativity, and the adoption of a privacy-first mindset across the ad tech space.
Again, we understand the gravity of the change this news will bring, and appreciate that players across our ecosystem are feeling hesitant and concerned. But we’re confident this shift will allow us to craft a stronger, more sustainable ecosystem together.
At Index, we look forward to working with our industry partners to create a more efficient and consumer-focused means of addressability, and we’ll continue to prepare for any forthcoming updates from Chrome. We’re committed to ushering media owners towards the world of people-based advertising, while ensuring disruption to their business is minimal.
For more information about the cookieless future:
- Ad Age, Google Chrome Killed the Cookie. What Now?
- Adweek, Google Kills the Cookie, Leaving Digital Media Companies Craving a New Way Forward
- The Drum, What Google Chrome’s cookie phaseout means for publishers
- Digiday, Winners, losers and fallout from Google’s plan to drop cookies
- ExchangeWire, Index Exchange’s James Prudhomme on Cookies, the ICO, and the NYT
- Mobile Marketing, Why is Google really killing the cookie?
- Media in Canada, ‘C’ is for ‘Chrome to phase out cookies
