Mateusz Rumiński

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.

In this part of the “Media Review” series, we take a deeper look at five stories – including an analysis of the most influential stakeholders in the cookieless environment, UID 2.0 GDPR issues, and Google’s presentation of a new concept aimed at providing a privacy-preserving federated identity before third-party cookies are phased-out.

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.

Contextual targeting might not be a new, flashy approach, but with the shift towards privacy-friendly cookieless advertising, it’s about to become a crucial part of every advertiser’s outreach strategy. As Google retires third-party cookies, old methods of targeting will become ineffective, and the ability to target interested users through more subtle markets, like content context, will be one of the keys to marketing success.

Let’s learn more about contextual targeting, look at some contextual advertising examples, and learn how you can deploy it in your campaigns.