Early last year, Google announced that they would be phasing out the use of cookies over the next two years. Last week, they again confirmed their plans and provided some additional clarity. Let’s take a look at the latest developments on the matter:
What Is Google Planning?
Google is removing third-party cookies from their Chrome browser, moving towards something called the “Federated Learning of Cohorts” in their new tool Privacy Sandbox. This means that data will be collected in clusters, as opposed to being collected by individual cookie IDs, which is how people are currently being targeted.
Why Are They Doing It?
The reason for the change comes from the need to protect user privacy (just like Apple's iOS is enforcing across all of their apps, check out our recent blog “How Will Apple’s iOS 14 Update Affect My Facebook Ads?” for more information ). Firefox and Safari have already done away with third party cookies (if one was inclined, one could opt-in in the browser settings, but few ones are so inclined!), so Google Chrome, Gmail and other Google properties are following suit.
How Will It Affect My Ads?
While no one is sure exactly what this means for remarketing efforts, we should still be able to remarket to clusters, just not the individual cookie IDs. We might not see large impacts within our accounts, but we'll need to review how Google will share information with our ecommerce tools and tracking. Our conversion tracking (e.g., which types of conversions we can track) may also change. Google is working on an event-level tracking API that should help us understand conversion measurement in the move towards cluster audiences.
What Should I Do Now?
At this time, our next step is simply to stay informed about these changes. The "Cookie Removal" likely won't be finalized until mid- to end of 2022, so we have some time to prepare.
We’re hopeful that Google is developing something equal to (if not better than!) our current targeting capabilities. We’ll be keeping our clients updated as things develop and working with each client to take the appropriate next steps. If you have any questions or would like to discuss your paid media accounts, don’t hesitate to reach out to your Interstellar account manager or contact us here.
Article written by Paid Media Specialist Lindsay Lynch.