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Once those cookies disappear, Amazon will stand as one of the few and largest platforms where marketers can precisely target and measure their advertising.

It’s a compelling narrative for a media seller, especially one aiming to expand its ads business to boost its overall bottom line. And Amazon is not holding back in exploring this opportunity.

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Some stakeholders are concerned its Privacy Sandbox proposals — a means of continuing behaviorally targeted advertising without the foundational technology — are tactics meant to evade government censure that may arise from its multiple anticompetitive tussles with governments on either side of the Atlantic.   

Such parties highlight how Google’s proposals within Privacy Sandbox effectively equate to the Chrome browser fulfilling the role of ad server and supply-side platform. For example, if Google’s proposals receive full approval from the U.K.’s Competition Markets Authority, effectively the global lead regulator on Privacy Sandbox, they argue, it could nullify any potential remedies sought by antitrust authorities in the U.S.   

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Welcome, dear readers, to the land of digital double-speak, where even the most innocuous phrases come with a side order of hidden meanings. As we journey through this topsy-turvy terrain, we’ll decode the messages, and maybe even have a chuckle or two at the expense of those who seem to speak a language all their own. So, buckle up, because we’re about to embark on a linguistic rollercoaster ride through the wild world of third-party cookie apocalypse talk.

What they say: We over-indexed on Chrome — and have been for too long.

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The task force, which represents the interests of more than 60 entities, produced its assessment of the Privacy Sandbox last week, the results of which were pretty damning — the phrase “not fit for purpose” comes to mind.

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And, without using too broad a brushstroke, Google’s return serve could be read as, “You’re not quite getting this whole privacy thing.” Or, more diplomatically, “We all have to try a bit harder.” The Privacy Sandbox saga is lining up to be one of the big stories of the 2020s in terms of the history of the media industry.

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They’re testing alternatives to third-party cookies now that the tech giant has clipped one percent of them in its Chrome browser. These marketers understand the tests won’t be perfect, but they’re seizing the moment to make a start. After all, as they argue, if not now, then when?

“We’ve had more interest in this [alternatives to third-party cookies] during this early part of the year than we had for the whole of 2023,” said Georgie Haig, product lead of identity at programmatic marketing agency MiQ.

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We already know that Google’s timeline of phasing out third-party cookies from its Chrome browser by the end of this year is a complicated one. But when do the marketing and media industries think cookies will actually be gone, if ever?

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It’s been a month since Google pulled the plug on these cookies on one percent of its browser’s traffic, and the marketing world’s reaction has been rather… underwhelming.

Marketers are chatting about it, but that’s about it. No mad dash to explore alternatives, no frenzied quest to fathom the full scope of the repercussions and they’re still scratching their heads over what this Privacy Sandbox thing even is.

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In fact, some ad executives are putting their money on cookies waving goodbye sometime in the first quarter of next year. They just can’t see it happening anytime before then, despite Google’s insistence that they will be gone before the year is done — especially not when the market considers that its alternative (the Privacy Sandbox) is looking nowhere near ready to pick up the slack.

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Some executives in the in-game advertising sector are building the narrative that the cookie collapse might just be the space’s golden ticket, a chance to step out of the ad world’s shadow. While it’s far from the first time in-game advertisers have looked to hitch their wagon to a particularly buzzworthy horse, there’s some truth in these grand claims, given the massive amount of user data generated by gaming environments.

Their theory — if you can call it that, given the uncertainty and guesswork of adland — goes something like this: once third-party cookies go kaput in Chrome once and for all, the online ad market beyond walled gardens will split into a big chunk of high-quality ad inventory with first-party identifiers and consent, alongside a long tail of poorly targeted impressions far more prone to fraud and malvertising.

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Compared to holding companies, independent agencies may use a more “multifaceted approach” to cookie deprecation, said Alexander Potts, senior vp of programmatic and media lead at Tombras.

“[Independents will use what] is customizable to the unique capabilities and needs of their business-focused clients, while showcasing the return to their bottom line,” Potts said.

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While this is not exactly “news” and just about every company in the sector has spent the last four years trumpeting their diligent preparations, there’s a widespread (if muted) unease over levels of preparedness ahead of the official year-end 2024 deadline.   

Speaking with Digiday ahead of the IAB’s flagship Annual Leadership Meeting this week, Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab, explained how the standards body intends to steward the sector through the trepidus year ahead.

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To help fill that cookie-sized hole in the digital ad industry’s measurement system, Google has developed the Attribution Reporting API as part of its Privacy Sandbox set of proposed third-party cookie replacements.

The Attribution Reporting API effectively has the browser play the part of the third-party cookie. But in order to protect people’s privacy, it restricts advertisers’ and publishers’ abilities to connect ad exposure and conversion data while introducing noise and delays.

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In a test of Unified ID 2.0 — which was developed by The Trade Desk, had been managed by Prebid and is now operated by TTD — Justin Wohl, CRO of Salon, Snopes and TV Tropes, recorded a 200% increase in CPMs compared to ads served to an authenticated audience with third-party cookies present. The testing started in early Q4 2023 and specifically focused on TVTropes.org’s logged-in user base, which represents about 5% of the site’s 150 million pageviews per month. The cookieless test group was confined to Apple’s Safari browser, which enabled the publisher to evaluate the alternative ID’s revenue impact in an environment isolated from third-party cookies.

After confirming those results with The Trade Desk, Wohl said his team “pretty much locked in our commitment to go all-in on UID 2.0.” 

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Private State Tokens effectively have sites that are able to authenticate site visitors be the ones to vouch for those visitors’ authenticity so that they can be trusted by other sites. As broken down in this explainer video, it’s akin to a friend recommending a therapist to another friend — albeit with the web browser providing a privacy-preserving means for passing on that recommendation.

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