This week Google made a surprise U-turn on its plan to ditch cookies. Ben Phillips, MAD//Fest's digital advertising consultant,  looks at the choices Google has offered to consumers as to which technology they want to target them? 

I am sure some if you have been made aware about Google’s latest cookie-deprecation jink in its very own “will they or won’t they” saga that feels like it's outlasted that of Tim & Dawn (or Jim & Pam, depending which revision of The Office you’ve been exposed too). 

You will have been informed by many LinkedIn posts, newsletters, chat groups or via water cooler moments/spontaneous discussion outside The Crown & Two Chairman, that the end of the cookie is NOT nigh!

If you work in the industry, you’d have had to have been living in some nuclear bunker, (without internet access), not to have heard this news. But what about those who have been handed the biggest decision of all, one that will affect the way in which their online activities are to be harvested and sold? The consumer. 

I have, unashamedly, recycled the term “Chaos Mode” from a fantastic post on LinkedIn from Zach Edwards – Senior Threat Researcher at Silent Push Inc.  It refers to Google’s decision to offer consumers a choice, to be targeted via 3pc or via the new Privacy Sandbox API’s.   

Having spent this week with my think-tank of consumers, comprised of partner, parents, daughter, Aunty Lorraine, Uber drivers and Ginger Steve the electrician, the amount of information escaping from the trade to civilian publications and newsfeeds available to the newly appointed decision makers of the New World Order seems to have been buried in “other news”.   

Has the cookie crumbled?

Some of the more cynical commentators will lead you to believe that this announcement was made when the eyes of the world are on the US Presidential campaigns and the worst IT outage the world has ever seen, so focus was not on the US Justice Department's decision to file a civil antitrust suit against Google for monopolising multiple digital advertising technology products. (Based on its own accounts, Google makes up for 30% of all ad dollars).   

I look forward to the seeing the vast amounts of promotion, education and training that Google must invest in, if it expects consumers to make an “Informed Choice”. Maybe it should employ a more tangible solution such as the old BuzzFeed, “What type of Pizza are you?” quiz and let the public stick to that outcome? 

Garnering trust has never been an easy task for Google. On 1st April 2024, Google settled a $5bn lawsuit which started in 2020 and effected consumers, post 2016, using “Private Browsing”, after it was alleged that the company continued to track, harvest and resell consumer browsing data. Consumers had been led to believe that browsing was private in Incognito and other “private” modes in other browsers. 

Good things aren’t just coming, conversation around the progression of privacy and consideration for the consumers/decision makers marks a positive move in the right direction for us all.     

Matt McIntyre – SVP Product Strategy (Activation) @ Choregraph posted a perfectly short and concise position on the subject this week: 

“All the ad tech cos who have built 'cookieless' solutions which rely on 3PC data to create and train their predictive models. Congratulations, your product development roadmap just opened up for other features” 

Based on a Statista survey carried out mid 2023, “73% of responding professionals [Brand, Agency, Advertisers…] stated that their organisation had adopted at least one 3pc replacement solution another 20% said they are planning to adopt in the future” which would suggest that the business decisions, be they based on practicality, objectives even ethics have a variety of solutions available to them, more so today than ever before, and are being adopted. 

Based on your roles & responsibilities and as a consumer, what will you choose? And why? 

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” – Maya Angelou