Google has taken the long-anticipated step of announcing it will phase out support for third-party tracking cookies from its Chrome browser within two years. This follows similar anti-tracking measures from Firefox and Safari, and comes days after the CCPA came into law in the US.
Google’s aim as it moves towards a cookie-free Chrome, as stated on the Chromium blog, is ‘to make the web more private and secure for users, while supporting publishers’.
At illuma, we share these principles and have long been working towards this exact scenario. What is more, following the ICO’s report last year, we believe the time is now right for Google to take this step.
The news that Chrome will no longer support third-party cookies may bring understandable alarm to advertisers who still track audiences across the web. It will also add further necessary pressure on the industry to adopt privacy-friendly ways to identify, understand and target online audiences.
What does Google’s announcement about tracking cookies mean for Illuma’s contextual targeting?
illuma’s advanced contextual technology has always worked without relying on third-party cookies or other personal data, and it is a powerful and privacy-friendly way of delivering campaign success. It works instead by understanding the contextual signals surrounding a campaign and by expanding in real-time to find similar users at scale, irrespective of, and blind to, user profile.
The anti-tracking changes announced by Google, and indeed by other browsers, will have no significant impact on campaigns run with Illuma.
As Google takes this much-needed journey towards privacy, we will be watching with interest for its proposed solutions around conversion measurement, personalisation and anti-fingerprinting; and also observing how it handles its own vast library of first-party data.
In the meantime, we would like to express our support and underline our deep-held belief that the online ecosystem will not just thrive without third-party tracking cookies, it can evolve to deliver a vastly improved experience for advertisers, users and publishers.
Read more here.