It’s a dark and stormy night. High up in Alphabet Towers, the Google Privacy Sandbox team opens the roof to reveal the darkness above. Suddenly, a blinding bolt of light arcs down and slams into the table at the centre of the room. In the silence that follows, a form rises from the slab. A form of tracking once believed forever doomed to the grave. The Privacy Sandbox team raise their hands to the thunderous clouds above, and scream:
“It’s ALIVE!”
I apologize for the somewhat dramatic introduction, but I felt I needed to make up for the rather limp manner in which Google themselves announced one of the biggest turnarounds in recent history. A few days ago, Google announced in a blog post that they would be scrapping the planned depreciation of third party cookies from Google Chrome, which was scheduled to happen at the end of this year, in favour of ‘an updated approach that elevates user choice’. This comes after years of announcements and delays regarding the change, which was going to be a seismic shift in how marketing operated online.
In this blog, I’m going to go through what Google have told us about the decision, what we think has actually driven them to make the change, and what the future might now look like for the advertising industry. Many might be celebrating the resurrection of third party cookies, but I’ve read Frankenstein, and it didn’t end well for the monster.
What Google Have Said
The only announcement we have at the moment is Google’s blog post, which I linked earlier. In it, Google starts by reaffirming that the Privacy Sandbox will be able to fulfil its purpose to allow advertisers to target relevant users with ads whilst keeping privacy and a high level for users. They then go on to announce, however, that they have decided to scrap the planned removal of third party cookies entirely.
Instead, Google will be introducing a ‘new experience’ to Chrome, which will allow users to ‘make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing’. They emphasise that they will continue working on the Privacy Sandbox, and that it will be provided as an option to advertisers as a more privacy focussed option. They finish by saying that they will be working with regulators, such as the CMA in the UK, as they get this new direction in place.
I think this blog post is very… strange.
For a start, they begin by telling us that the Privacy Sandbox is going great, and will be able to perform its function of allowing us to target advertising without cookies. Then they tell us that we get to keep cookies anyway. So, and I don’t think I’m asking a crazy question here, why does the Privacy Sandbox exist?
They then go on to be strangely vague about the ‘new experience’ we will see in Chrome, despite it being pretty obvious, to my reading, that what they mean is that users will be asked to opt in or out to cookies when they first open Chrome. If that is the decision, why not just announce that?
And then finally, the change itself. Google have been working on the Privacy Sandbox for four years, and have been planning to remove third party cookies for about the same time frame. Now, mere months before the planned date, they have turned around and scrapped the whole thing.
What on earth has happened?
What (We Think) Actually Happened
In Frankenstein, at one point the monster says “I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” I think it describes Google’s approach to removing third party Cookies quite well. But I hope you can see the issue – just being confident you can do something does not give you the functional ability to do it.
I imagine that when Google announced that they would be removing third party cookies from Chrome, they were confident that they could update their systems to handle a cookieless world. They have one of the biggest data sets in the world after all, and entire teams of industry professionals to dedicate to the task. How hard can it be?
And so they announced it, which appeased regulators who had been circling the industry giant after both Firefox and Safari had already scrapped third party cookie tracking. Google announced in 2020 that they would follow suit.
In 2022.
So you can tell it wasn’t all plain sailing.
The big challenge for Google is that, unlike Apple and Mozilla, a huge proportion of its revenue comes from advertising. Advertising requires tracking, and tracking largely requires third party cookies. This was the challenge the Privacy Sandbox was built to solve.
The unfortunate truth, however, is that it has struggled to fulfil the purpose it was built for. The first few times advertisers were allowed to test the Sandbox, it failed to achieve anywhere near similar levels of performance to traditional advertising. It has improved since then, but still falls short of equalling cookie-based marketing methods.
At the same time, not all of Google’s marketing systems had an integration that allowed them to use the Privacy Sandbox. We had recent contact with Google reps who had told us that Campaign Manager, the main tracking system for Google’s Marketing 360 suite of tools, had no released integration. This was a deep concern to us.
And so Google pushed the date of removal backwards, and backwards, and backwards, from 2022 to August 2024, to end of 2024, to beginning of 2025. It was pretty clear that Google was simply not ready to make the change. Systems were not in place, and performance was still low. Maybe this result was inevitable, but Google clearly didn’t think so until recently.
Never Has a Cookie-Filled Future Felt Less Appetising
Many advertisers are likely rejoicing right now, feeling like the removal of cookies was a sword of Damocles that has been taken down from its precarious position above their heads. Google has brought back the dead, they should be applauded!
I suspect that, just like Frankenstein, Google may have spent too much time asking if they could, and not if they should.
There are three big concerns I have for the future of cookies on Chrome, and in a wider sense advertising on Google in general…
The Regulators
Google has been struggling in recent years to battle against huge resistance from online regulators. They want Google to be less monopolising, less invasive, and most importantly in this case, more privacy friendly. I am sure they are not too happy that Google has essentially backpedalled on the 4 years’ worth of work they have put into making Google adopt a cookieless browser system.
It must be pointed out that some of the delays were caused by regulators themselves, who were concerned about rushing out a half-baked solution on a browser used by over half the world, but I still suspect that there will be pushback on this new, complete reversal of direction.
Even if regulators accept this ‘new experience’ version of privacy Google are moving towards, they will want to make it as easy as possible to get rid of third party cookies. Which leads me on to…
The Data
The reason so many marketers will be happy with this news is that they feel that they will not lose anywhere near as much data as they were going to, but I suspect this is a rather optimistic view of the future.
We already have data on cookie acceptance rates based on banners on websites. This is, on average, somewhere around 65% for websites we have looked at. Assuming the overall opt-in rate for Chrome is similar, that means you will, on average, only see 42% of your users through third party cookie-based tracking. For small or even medium-sized charities, this is going to leave data sets small enough that it may be difficult to draw any significant conclusions.
This is my best guess as to why the Privacy Sandbox is staying around at all, but the big difference now is that, because Google will provide the option of third party cookies, they are under no obligation to make the Sandbox work as well as traditional advertising. This could place small charities between a rock and a hard place: using hamstrung cookie tracking or a Privacy Sandbox that is only half baked.
The Competitors
Take a look at Safari’s current advertising campaign – currently taking over many tube stations in London:
Now isn’t that a coincidence.
Whether or not Safari had any forewarning this announcement was coming, this illustrates the third danger I foresee from this change of direction. Google has exposed a weak spot, something that, categorically, the other, smaller browsers of the world can confidently say they do better than the giant. Many users in the modern age are concerned about their data privacy, and (rightly or wrongly) third party cookies are now seen as a feature that is very close to the line of data privacy acceptability. I anticipate we see far more of this sort of advertising from Apple and Mozilla, and if this causes Chrome’s market share to begin to dip we may see a turnaround to the turnaround before too long.
So, the deed is done. Google have made the decision, pulled the lever, and raised the dead. Third party cookies have taken their first stumbling steps back into a world that was already grieving their untimely demise. Will it be a world that welcomes them with open arms, or one that immediately reaches for the torches and pitchforks?
Only time will tell how this story ends, but I believe we are still in for a rocky road ahead, just not quite the one we were expecting. We’ll see what further details of the new Chrome experience Google announce in the coming weeks, but as I write this now I can’t help but feel that the future of Chrome, and by extension the whole internet, has just profoundly changed.
One final quote from Frankenstein: “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
And boy does my head hurt right now.
Share this article: