There are growing rumblings within the ad industry that Google won’t be able to get rid of third-party tracking cookies until 2025 at the earliest.
Third-party cookies are small files stored on a user’s device that advertisers use to track people across websites to target them with ads and measure whether those ad campaigns are working.
This would be a third delay from the deadline Google originally set in January 2020, when it said it would stop supporting third-party cookies within its Chrome browser “within two years” to make web browsing more secure for users. It has since delayed that plan twice to give the ad industry more time to prepare, but has repeatedly said it’s on track for a fourth-quarter, 2024 cookie expiry date.
But some industry experts believe that won’t be possible, based on a recent update from the regulatory body overseeing the cookie phase out process and through conversations among companies that have been testing Google’s proposed cookie alternatives.
Google is running out of time to develop cookieless technologies that won’t hamper competition
In recent years, Google and other companies have been testing new technologies within its so-called Privacy Sandbox that don’t require cookies, and are designed to preserve user privacy while still maintaining adequate targeting and measurement capabilities.
As part of commitments it made to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, Google can’t switch off third-party cookies in Chrome until the CMA is satisfied the Privacy Sandbox technologies aren’t anticompetitive.
The CMA said in a recent update report that it’s aiming to gather all its evidence about the likely impact of those changes “by the middle of 2024.” If the CMA approves of the Privacy Sandbox technologies, there will then be a “standstill period” between 60 and 120 days before Google can switch off cookies.
Google has said it wants to gradually phase out cookies starting the third quarter of next year. To make its deadline to stop support for cookies altogether in 2024, it would have to switch off cookies by September 2024, said James Rosewell, founder of device detection company 51Degrees. Rosewell is also cofounder of the Movement for an Open Web nonprofit group, which has been lobbying hard against Google’s changes.
“It’s unlikely something of this magnitude would be approved in this timeframe,” said Rosewell.
Google would face intense scrutiny if it switched off cookies later in 2024 than that, because it has said that it wouldn’t do so at a time when it would heavily impact the busy holiday retail and advertising season.
“Publishers would generally be relieved to have cookies around for another holiday season from a pure operational and planning perspective,” said Achim Schlosser, chief technology officer of the European netID Foundation, which provides single sign-on and consent management products.
The CMA and Google said they want to avoid a further postponement.
“Although the timeline for removal of third-party cookies has been set by Google, we are keen to ensure there are no further delays in the process, provided that our competition concerns are addressed,” said a spokesperson for the CMA.
“We continue to move forward with our plans to phase out third-party cookies in H2 2024, and our commitments to the CMA have not changed,” said a Google spokesperson.
Publishers, adtech companies, and privacy experts have concerns about Google’s latest proposals
Officially stated timelines aside, experts said there’s still plenty of work to be done before Privacy Sandbox technologies will pass muster with advertising technology companies and publishers — and therefore be deemed competitive by the CMA.
“It’s a mess,” said one ad industry executive speaking on condition of anonymity in order to talk freely about the process. “The documentation is atrocious. No one is even sure what or how to test.”
The CMA’s latest Privacy Sandbox update listed various concerns from various constituents about the proposals. Publishers have said one of Google’s ad-targeting proposals is too favorable to advertisers and could cost them revenue. Adtech companies are worried about incurring extra costs to build new transaction systems for buyers. And others are concerned that Google’s new way of handling user consent is designed in a way to make it more likely for consumers to opt in.
“If the date is not pushed, we are walking the industry off a cliff,” the executive added.
In a statement, a Google spokesperson said the company is confident the industry can make the transition away from cookies in 2024, based on the progress it had seen from companies like Yahoo, Criteo, OpenX, and RTB House who have indicated they’ve either started testing or plan to do so in January.
“Of course companies’ readiness will depend on when they start preparing so we encourage everyone to start now to be ready for the transition off third-party cookies,” the Google spokesperson said.
In some ways, Google is currently stuck between a rock and a hard place, said Paul Bannister, chief strategy officer of the publisher ad management company Raptive. The Google Ads and Chrome teams have ramped up their Privacy Sandbox efforts with the industry “100-fold” in recent months, through marketing, meetings, appearances at events, building tech, releasing documentation, and offering grants to companies to open up engineering resources for testing, he said.
“They don’t want to lose face and delay it again, that’s bad,” Bannister said. “They know if they delay it again that takes the pressure off everyone else, and that’s the problem — people need to feel the pressure. How do you bridge that gap?”
Despite some skepticism that Google can hit its 2024 deadline, many in the ad industry just want to move past third-party cookies after almost four years in limbo. A recent survey from ID5, an adtech company that provides a cookie-alternative identifier solution, found that 70% of adtech professionals believe cookie deprivation is imminent.
“Whether this happens in Q3 or Q4 2024 or Q1 2025 is irrelevant,” said Mathieu Roche, CEO and cofounder of ID5.
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