On July 27, 2022, Google announced that they were delaying the looming sunset of third-party cookies once again—this time until the second half of 2024—with the intent to give marketers more time to test the Privacy Sandbox initiative and related technology.
Background on the Evolving Browser Landscape
Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) rolled out in 2017 with increasing restrictions launching in 2018 and 2019. Currently, cookies set in first-party contexts using JavaScript are limited to a maximum of 24 hours. This restriction applies to any browser on Apple devices, including Chrome—not just Safari. With more and more consumers shopping on mobile devices, ITP quickly pushed the industry to develop and adopt tech that allows necessary transparency into purchase behavior while respecting consumer privacy. The very first balancing act of its kind, but certainly a signal of the things to come.
Mozilla followed suit in 2019 by announcing that Firefox browsers would block all third-party cookies by default.
Google announced in January 2020 that they were working towards phasing out third-party cookies on Chrome browsers, initially setting a target date of 1H 2022. With this announcement, Google also shared the plans for the Privacy Sandbox as a means to eliminate marketers’ reliance on cookies in Chrome, and shift toward a privacy-first approach to consumer targeting and data capturing. Needless to say, Google’s announcement made major waves across the entire digital marketing landscape—it’s time to bid a final farewell to reliance on third-party cookies.
The Time to Act is Now: CJ’s Tech Solutions for the Cookieless Browser Landscape
If you take away one message from this article, it’s this: it’s still crucial that you act now.
While Chrome is pushing out the deadline for third-party cookie deprecation to the second half of 2024, it’s imperative that the marketplace stays the course to innovate and focus on creating privacy-first ways to execute marketing programs. Don’t wait to start exploring how to address a cookieless browser landscape—it’s already upon us.
While the shifting privacy landscape has forced technologies to evolve, CJ has been laser-focused on developing technology that future-proofs tracking, preserves website functionality, and improves consumer shopping experiences. Our flexible integration solutions are designed with a privacy-first approach that allows advertisers, agencies, and publishers to maintain tracking and transaction-level insights, and unlocks additional analysis opportunities including Affiliate Incrementality Analysis, Customer Status Analysis, Affiliate & Cross-Channel Customer Journey—the list goes on and will continue to expand.
Learn more about our approach to this changing digital ecosystem in our upcoming CJU22 session, “How Performance Marketing Can Thrive in Cookieless World” with CJ’s digital privacy expert and Product Director, Angela Ballard, and identity-solution leader, LiveRamp.
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Looking for more guidance? Contact us to determine the integration package that will protect your program now and set you up for success as we continue down the privacy-forward path to digital marketing.
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