An article in MediaPost recently reported that Google has announced it will be phasing out all third-party cookies from Google Chrome. Best estimates suggest that Chrome represents almost 70% of the desktop browser market and 40% of mobile. Safari, Firefox and Microsoft have the rest, and many of them already include ad blockers, cookie-clearing and other tools that hamper digital targeting.
Removal of third-party cookies (and thus third-party involvement), means that Google will now offer its own (proprietary) targeting methodology, using its own (Google) data. As a result, if you work at an ad-tech company not named Google (or Facebook or Amazon, for that matter) then your ability to deliver targeted ad messages is going to become increasingly limited, and will not be able to be independently verified. We are moving into a Google-centric advertising world.
Cory Treffiletti, the author of the MediaPost article, suggested that most marketers will see this and move on; and moving on in this context will mean that they will either choose to work with Google and ignore the consequences, or perhaps not worry about targeting at all, and focus instead on other levers, such as price, or allocate their digital spend elsewhere (e.g. Outdoor, or paid Social).
In adopting such a monopoly position, Google’s targeting will increasingly become premium priced, as it will (claim to) offer one of the only accurate ways to deliver a specific audience at scale. Outside of a Google environment, OTT and digital video ads may still have the opportunity to “target” based on data or context (but scale will be an issue), and display (or Out-Of-Home) may suffer somewhat, because a comparable performance will be harder to achieve – unless the (cross-media) measure remains consistent and becomes more accurate. Paid social will be a channel where platform users data will still be able to be leveraged, although their track record in offering transparent assessments of reach and frequency are about as good as Google’s will become…i.e. not at all, and paid social will simply benefit the bank accounts of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
But here’s the rub…In a world where a third-party solution like the cookie is gone, third party (objective!) measurement is also gone, meaning that any independent measure of value/efficiency will no longer be possible. In addition, comparability with other media, across countries, or indeed across broadcasters/publishers will also be gone, as the Google measure (and e.g. the Paid social measures), will all be self-reported, open to internal manipulation and without any obligation for transparency. This was the cause for the reports published in the Autumn of 2018, when Facebook admitted over-inflating its video audience..by up to 80% !!
And so the removal of independent third party measures is on the cards again…and this is the bitter pill that brand owners and advertisers, will need to swallow…unless they all unite and insist upon maintaining independence and comparability in the audience measure(s) being used.
Google is a bit like IBM – “no-one gets fired for buying IBM” – and so it will be the marketing budgets that will facilitate this adoption; it is fair to say that all business departments feel their time is at a premium and so the available time to assess a new service or solution is limited – thus the ‘comfort’ default will remain Google…But therein lies the irony…by proceeding with the default, the efficiency of budget spend will become increasingly unclear, as there will be no independent audit. Advertisers Beware!
So, what does that mean for the industry? Well, it means that cookies may now really be on their way out, and so too, is objectivity and independent assessment. All good governance systems rely on an independently verifiable measure…why should Tech be any different?
Stay tuned for part 2 of this article, which will be published Wednesday 5 February.
Cover photo by Pathum Danthanarayana on Unsplash
3 comments
Thanks a lot for the MR focused perspective Finn.
The ad industry and DMP world is taking a slightly different, more (cautiously) optimistic view though. By taking cookies out of the mix the reliance on other ID’ing approaches will increase and investment be put into those. Some don’t like that because it becomes a little black boxy. For research this is not so easy, but it doesn’t mean there are no ways to measure and assess any more.
At MDI we have a way of unifying all media (online and offline) exposure measurement without the use of cookies. I say this just to re-assure people that this isn’t the death of objective measurement (well, maybe a little to also shamelessly plug ourselves).
Very interesting, Finn. Thanks for sharing it.
I believe there are many questions for the future, but also things we need to consider now. Is the current cookie based adTech system respectful of users privacy? Is it clear and transparent for users what is being done with their information? Probably not so much, and that is what Google is using as an excuse to phase out third-party cookies.
If this goes on, first party data (probably no one collects as much as Google) may be the only source of differentiation, and we will see an even greater concentration in Google’s advertising platform.
Without knowing how this is going to work (Google claims they will speak about this with the industry), everyone that plays a role in online advertising should be watchful, but the focus should not be who gets advantages, but how can everyone together create a new ecosystem that is both competitive, transparent and respectful of individual’s privacy.
Thanks Finn for raising this issue. Having worked in the web-analytics space for a long time, I was witness to many bugs that falsified the metrics used to by online performance marketing, website usage, and online ad campaigns. The in-transparency of the online infrastructure industry goes beyond what you have sketched out. To add a perspective from social listening, Facebook barely provides any useful data, and has recently closed off Instagram from third-party monitoring tools. Transparency of these platforms is vital not just for advertisers, but for consumers too. The same restrictions that make verification of reach or campaign impact metrics are the same needed to allow disinformation and manipulation of information possible. Thus the transparency issue you raise, has ramification for our societies, not “just” for advertising dollars. Thanks!