How Google’s U-turn on cookie deprecation will affect European marketers

Cookies may continue to figure into marketers’ diets after all, at least for a while longer.

Many European marketers woke up to the news today that in a stunning about-face, Google would give Chrome users a choice regarding cookies rather than deprecate them.

The announcement came after months of industry pushback on Privacy Sandbox, Google’s identity solution for Chrome.

What this means

This latest plot twist isn’t likely to have a major impact on European and U.K. marketers, who have been moving away from cookies. Many have long been preparing for deprecation by turning to first-party data, retail data, alternative IDs, among other solutions. And they remain bullish on a world without cookies.

“From my perspective, this [trend] is unstoppable. Especially in Europe, with its stringent data protection regulations,” Martin Pichler, chief sales officer at German publisher highfivve, tells The Current.

Marketers’ preparations were indeed likely spurred by regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which regulates the collection of user data.

“When we take a closer look at how well third-party cookies do this, we find this technology is flawed,” Mathieu Roche, co-founder and CEO at ID5, tells The Current. “Believing that cookies are here to stay is shortsighted. We expect to see a progressive opt-out from cookies. The process may be slower, but the ultimate destination will be the same.”

What the ad world is saying

For Pedro Mona, head of consultancy at Assembly Europe, it’s “business as usual.”

Even though Chrome’s cookies are now set to stay, there’s a sense of “same old,” as they never really went away, says Mona.

“As advertisers and publishers have already implemented consent management platforms, we already live with the impact of reduced consent for tracking,” he says. “Keeping cookies on Chrome is not going to change much of what we do today.”

Meanwhile, some publishers are undeterred in their quest to be less dependent on cookies.

“Despite Google’s decision, those who have invested in alternatives continue to benefit,” says highfivve’s Pichler. “The industry must adapt to a multi-ID and multi-signal environment. We have been working with various ID providers for several years and have already achieved positive results. We expect that alternative identity solutions will be increasingly adopted and further developed.”

What’s more, Google’s U-turn may ultimately drive away advertisers. Nadeem Qureshi, team lead of product management at Germany publisher BCN, thinks that the availability of addressable third-party cookie inventory will likely diminish further, especially if Chrome moves to an Apple-like App Tracking Transparency consent model.

Consequently, this inventory’s reach “may not suffice to meet advertisers’ needs,” says Qureshi.

What regulators are saying

Earlier this year, the Competition Market Authority (CMA), the U.K.’s competition regulator. expressed concerns that Google’s cookie alternative on Chrome, Privacy Sandbox, wasn’t doing enough to protect consumer privacy.

Now, in a statement shared with The Current, a spokesperson from the CMA said the regulator will need to “carefully consider Google’s new approach to Privacy Sandbox, working closely with the ICO [Information Commissioner’s Office, the U.K.’s data protection regulator] in this regard.”

The spokesperson also said the CMA will “welcome views on Google’s revised approach — including possible implications for consumers and market outcomes.”

A statement released by the ICO said that while it was “disappointed that Google has changed its plans,” it would “continue to encourage the digital advertising industry to move to more private alternatives to third-party cookies — and not to resort to more opaque forms of tracking.”

Roche expects regulators to keep a “close eye” on how Google chooses to roll out user choice within Chrome. “They’ll want to see if it truly offers users transparency, choice and control over how their data is collected, shared and used,” he says.