First-party Cookies

In this Media Review, we bring together 5 stories, including accusations against Meta for using ad-related data to harm the competition, Apple’s allowance for outside app stores on its phones, and Google sharing its First Party Sets (FPS) concepts as ready for testing.

The end of third-party tracking cookies is on the horizon, but it’s not as bad as you might think. Despite concerns from some advertisers that losing third-party cookies will make it impossible to deliver personalized advertising, there are already a number of effective solutions in the works to ensure that users can still enjoy relevant ads, without any privacy fears.

Let’s take a quick dive into why third-party tracking cookies are being retired, what that means for your advertising strategy, and why it’s actually a good thing for both customers and advertisers.

Welcome to the era of the cookieless world, where the landscape of digital advertising is undergoing significant changes. With the imminent phase-out of third-party cookies, the role of first-party data is becoming increasingly crucial. In this article, we’ll delve into how advertisers are navigating this shift and harnessing first-party data to fuel retargeting campaigns effectively. Let’s take a look at innovative solutions like OBTD (Outcome-Based Turtledove) and delve into practical use cases and technical details in this evolving digital ecosystem.

Marketers are being proactive in advance of the demise of third-party cookies but challenges, as well as opportunities, remain.

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?

2023 has been a year of big changes for marketers. Artificial Intelligence tools like ChatGPT have transformed how many of us do our jobs, third-party cookies are on the cusp of being retired, and consumers have become more privacy-conscious than ever before. Despite the enormity of these changes, in many ways they’ve just set the scene for the big things to come in 2024. To understand what’s going on, we’ll briefly review MarTech trends in 2023, and then dive into the top MarTech trends in 2024.