Surviving the digital age without third-party cookies

After numerous delays, including one projected for 2023, the advertising market has had some breathing room. Google has set the end of third-party advertising cookies for the third quarter of 2024. These small bits of data exchanged to track user activity online are truly on the verge of disappearing.

The end of third-party cookies ⌚️

Used for many years by advertisers and websites to collect consumer habits, their use has long been at the heart of many debates, particularly regarding privacy and personal data protection for internet users. This was especially true in 2020 and 2021, which were marked by a strong awareness of personal data protection issues and radical announcements made by web giants Apple and Google.

Faced with pressure from browsers blocking third-party cookies by default, Google announced in 2020 that it would stop supporting third-party cookies on its Chrome browser starting in 2022, only to eventually postpone this phase-out to mid-2024.

These numerous delays highlight the difficulty of implementing this digital revolution, which marks a major turning point in the online advertising landscape. Today, it is essential for marketers, brands, and advertisers to find cookieless solutions to continue targeting the right audience and measuring the effectiveness of our campaigns.

A new challenge that Klox is ready to tackle with you!

🍪 What are the different types of cookies?

Cookies are small text files that store information about your web browsing. They have specific functions that vary depending on the type of cookie. There are two main types: first-party cookies and third-party cookies.

1st party cookies 1️⃣

These first-party cookies are issued by the servers of the domain name the user is visiting. For example, if you visit our site, 1st-party cookies will be associated with our domain name klox.io.

Here are the different use cases:

- Reporting traffic data for your proprietary site - which you can find on Google Analytics - among others.
- Improving user experience - remembering passwords, language preferences, and certain actions like adding items to a cart...
- Personalizing content on your own site, for example, to conduct A/B testing.

3rd party cookies 3️⃣

Unlike its cousin (👀), third-party cookies are issued by third-party servers, meaning tools or partners - such as LinkedIn, for example. Below is an excerpt of the cookie placed by a LinkedIn tag present on our site.

Third-party cookies have functions more focused on advertising:

- Remarketing - in other words, retargeting or ad retargeting.
- Audience exclusion, such as people who have already purchased your product.
- Frequency management (frequency capping).
-Attribution / measurement of advertising campaigns.

🦣 Why is Google also deciding to end third-party cookies?

1. A recurring issue and legislative questions

The removal of third-party cookies is an issue that quickly stirred up the advertising sector. Faced with numerous pitfalls, Google ended up postponing the phase-out of third-party cookies on its browser several times. This gave marketers and advertisers an extra year to let a rather tense market breathe.

However, pressure from the legislative side continues to mount. Regulatory expectations are multiplying with the advent of the GDPR in Europe and Consumer Privacy Acts in the United States. The advertising industry has no choice but to apply the rules and be concerned about the privacy rights and the protection of personal data of consumers.

Debates over the reliability and effectiveness of third-party cookies in accurately identifying internet users are also at the root of this revolution in the advertising landscape.

Finally, other browsers such as Safari and Firefox already block third-party cookies automatically, meaning 30% of internet users are not tracked.

2. Identification issues

One of the biggest limitations of the third-party cookie is that it is not directly linked to a user but rather to a browser and a device. Throughout your day, you likely use your personal phone, then your personal and professional PC. You are potentially three different people in the eyes of the web.

Today, there are identification tools for cross-platform that we use at Klox, for example, but they cannot guarantee 100% reconciliation.

Before GDPR came into effect in May 2018, information about each user's browsing habits was collected via third-party cookies without our knowledge. Today, every website must be equipped with a CMP (Consent Management Platform) - the cookie banner used to obtain user consent.

As a result, the volume of third-party cookies collected has decreased significantly following the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation.

In addition to these two major flaws, cookie collection is becoming increasingly complicated due to the arrival of tools and regulations designed to support a better-protected web environment, such as:

- Adblock. These plugins limit or even completely block advertisements on publisher sites, as well as all tracking.
- Antivirus & Optimization software (e.g., CCleaner). These programs regularly clean your devices—including third-party cookies.
- Private browsing mode. Third-party cookies are blocked by default.
- Browser data protection policies (privacy policies). For several years, Safari with ITP and Firefox with ETP have been blocking third party cookies.

Driven by growing public awareness in recent years, Google initially announced the deprecation of third-party cookies in its Chrome browser for 2022, then 2023, before promising a gradual phase-out starting in 2024.

What does the end of third-party cookies mean for the advertising industry?

The tightening of regulations in Europe is shaking up the world of digital advertising. Companies will need to adapt accordingly and find new targeting strategies. However, the end of cookies does not mean the end of digital advertising. It marks the beginning of a new era and will push us to find new ways to guide our advertising strategies while complying with the regulations being implemented over time.

💥 Impacts on the media market

The gradual disappearance of third-party cookies has a significant impact on all players in the advertising and media sectors as a whole.

Here is a non-exhaustive list:

1. Content publishers. Third-party cookies allow them to segment their audiences to increase their value to advertisers. For example, visitors to L'Équipe's "Football" pages are more valuable than visitors to their entire site.
2. Data providers primarily focused on third-party cookie monetization.
3. CRM onboarders that allow you to find offline customers (such as in-store shoppers) in the web environment by associating an email address with a third-party cookie.
4. Performance-based advertising agencies that do not use any branding levers, as these are completely independent of cookies.

How can you adapt to this new era?

Stay informed: Start looking for the best cookieless alternatives for you and your strategies now.
Plan ahead: Google will allow for the simulation of the end of third-party cookies starting in the fourth quarter of 2023.

🧐 What are the cookieless alternatives?  

Google Privacy Sandbox:

To provide the advertising industry with a replacement for third-party cookies, Google launched and deployed Privacy Sandbox in 2021 to help advertisers better adapt to the phase-out of third-party cookies. Privacy Sandbox is a suite of technologies designed to introduce new targeting methods that better respect user privacy.

In 2022, several developers were able to test the pilot phase of the Privacy Sandbox APIs. Since July, these APIs have been available to all Chrome users. The goal is to allow professionals to familiarize themselves with these tools to facilitate the transition away from third-party cookies.

Privacy Sandbox also contributes to the discussion on security and fraud prevention.
Google positions itself as the guardian of all web data, aiming to limit advertising players' access to it to prevent any attempts at fingerprinting. This is a technique used to pin down a user's identity on servers, which goes against the principles of personal data protection.

And what about measurement ?
With a targeting strategy called  TOPICS , which involves targeting ads to people based on the categories of content they view online, the web browser, such as Chrome, will use the Topics API to determine the user's top 5 research interests each week from a list of 350 potential topics (for example, video games, motor vehicles, women's clothing, football, etc.)

Finally, other alternatives are available to you :

- Sparrow (Criteo)
- Dovekey (W3C - Google Ads)
- REARC (IAB & Advertising Industry)

How can you measure your campaigns after the end of cookies?

The Implcit methodology:

Implcit has developed a unique method for projecting actual purchases onto the Médiamétrie panel. This makes it possible to analyze the population actually exposed, compare it to the theoretical target, and understand the distribution of contacts based on frequency or the share of impressions on target…

What is Implcit?

Implcit has unique access to the Internet panel of Médiamétrie, the benchmark for audience measurement.

25,000 representative volunteers install software that anonymously measures their behavior on mobile, tablet, and computer.

In short:

As we mentioned in the article, the decision to move away from third-party cookies is driven by both personal data protection and efficiency.

This advertising identifier has been the cornerstone of digital advertising on the web, but it must be admitted that it has its limitations when it comes to identifying users across different environments and devices (mobile web vs. desktop), and therefore, the accuracy of measurement and frequency capping.

This is why many Universal ID projects are currently in development that would meet all the criteria.

A new era that opens the door to other targeting methods!

Semantic targeting

Alongside people-centrictargeting, it is worth noting the progress made in semantic targeting , which allows for targeting very specific contexts within articles.

Connected TV and digital audio

The rise of Connected TV and digital audio promises a bright future for targeting capabilities, particularly thanks to the power of Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), which makes it possible to identify the context of a TV or audio program.

To learn more, discover the Klox strategy!

Klox already offers cookieless campaigns, and clients like Corum L’Épargne have already taken the leap. We implemented a brand awareness campaign for this advertiser that is cross-device (cookie-free).

The strategy implemented:

By using a device ID, which is a mobile identifier independent of cookies, allowing for ad targeting and measurement within the in-app environment. It is therefore unaffected by the announced end of cookies.

Thanks to mobile geolocation measurement provided by Adsquare on the Hawk DSP, we were able to collect and group into audience segments the device IDs of people who passed by DOOH billboards during our client Corum's campaign.

In a second phase, we used these audience segments to retarget the people exposed to the DOOH ads, this time through display banners on their mobile phones and with a different message (retargeting).

We would be delighted to help you implement the most effective tools and strategies as we approach the post-third-party cookie era.