Mateusz Rumiński

In January 2020, Google announced that it will end support for third-party tracking cookies in the Google Chrome browser “within two years,” signifying major changes for retargeting Google Ads. In June 2021, this timeline was extended to 2023, June 2022 brought yet another extension to the 2nd half of 2024, and in April 2024 it was postponed to the beginning of 2025. Moreover, Google Chrome declared withdrawing 1% of 3rd-party cookies in Q1 2024 to provide a reliable environment for testing.

Other browsers, such as Safari, Firefox, and Edge, have already stopped supporting 3rd party cookies for retargeting ads. But from the marketer’s point of view, the fact that Google will also follow this trend for retargeting Google Ads is important due to Chrome’s over 60% market share. Therefore—how will retargeting work without cookies?

Imagine a world without personalized ads. Brands would be forced to build generic messaging and throw it into the void, praying that it connected with someone. Customers would be less likely to find the products they actually want and forced to settle for whatever they happened upon online. Personalized ads help companies connect with people who actually want their products and save consumers from wasting their time on irrelevant content.

However, there’s a new challenge on the horizon. Consumers have become increasingly privacy conscious, and as an industry, we have had to find new ways to personalize our content to consumers while also respecting their privacy. This guide will walk you through personalized ads and how they will function as we move towards more privacy-friendly personalized ads.

Today’s model of selecting and reaching audiences, primarily based on data brokers, raises many questions regarding the transparency of obtaining information about the user, and the coming changes in regards to the removal of 3rd party cookies will significantly impact the data brokerage industry.

The digital marketing landscape is a very complex environment. There are many players with different profiles of activities addressing the diverse needs of their clients.

In this chapter of our “Media Review” series, we describe the results of the CMA investigation into Google’s Privacy Sandbox, Tech Lab’s release of “Seller Defined Audience” and more.

The testing season of cookieless tools has started with the announcement of Origin Trials for the Privacy Sandbox proposals. Adtech is now filled with various opportunities for testing – contextual targeting, identity solutions, first-party publisher’s audience data, or group-based methods. It is high time to leave feedback about specific tools in the places where it matters.