Phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome – how to prepare for it?
For a long time now, the online advertising market, including online advertisers, digital marketing agencies and performance marketing agencies, has been in awe of the planned third-party cookie phaseout in Chrome by the end of 2023.
With this change, the alteration in the market of Internet browsers will be almost complete, when these browsers disable the so-called third-party cookies that have been successfully implemented previously in the Safari, Firefox, and Edge web browsers, and by Apple within the ios operating system.
Phasing out cookies at the end of 2023 will mean a significant change for online advertisers, online content providers, and performance marketing agencies alike.
In this blog article, we’ll look through this information from all angles, as well as provide helpful tips for getting ready in time.
What is behind the phasing out of cookies?
Internet users – website visitors and online shoppers in general – are becoming increasingly aware of the disclosure of their personal information online, and lawmakers around the world want to enforce the ethical behavior of website owners, online advertising platforms and other online players concerning the processing and use of their personal data.
Legislators see it as their legitimate mission to protect the personal information of internet users. The EU GDPR Regulation, which came into force in 2018, defined a cookie as personal data – whether it is a first-party cookie or a third-party cookie. From the moment that the cookie is considered a personal data, it can only be stored, processed and analyzed with the consent of the data subject. However, the biggest problem of compliance for online advertisers is that local regulations are proliferating, and compliance with them will sooner or later be nearly impossible.
By removing cookies, Google presumably also wants to get rid of a serious data management issue, a prime example of which is the difficulty of transferring data between EU and non-EU locations.
Website owners and online advertisers have so far faced a serious dilemma in complying with the EU’s GDPR Regulation:
- If they followed the regulations literally, they suffered a serious loss, even if we think only of the measurement data of our own website: the acceptance rate of the cookie window at the bottom of a screen is between 5-15%, and the cookie window in the middle of the screen is no more than 30%.From this we can see that on average 70-90% of the very valuable visitor data is lost by the website owner who only starts measuring in a completely GDPR compliant manner – using Google Analytics – if the visitor accepts the use of analytical cookies.
- If a website owner ignored the GDPR Regulation and used immediate measurement, he or she violated all possible laws. On the other hand, they had measurement data.
Important: The third-party cookie removal scheduled for the end of 2023 in Chrome will only apply to the so-called to third-party cookies, not the first-party cookies!
Forrás: Data illustrations by Storyset
But what will replace cookies?
Google has repeatedly stated that it does not build alternative tracking technologies to trigger cookies, but is of course working on solutions that will provide advertisers with relevant advertising targets.
How can you prepare for phasing out cookies in 2023?
For online advertisers and website owners, preparation means taking a number of steps to have future-proof website measurements and onine advertising system-side measurements at the time the cookies are removed.
What to do as an internet user?
The good news is that the actions that Google takes are in the users interest.
As a user or internet user, we have no choice but to regularly review what information is stored about us on Google and Facebook and, if necessary, change our consent and security settings for data management.
What to do as a website owner?
If you have a corporate or product website, it is in your best interest to comply with the GDPR Regulation and to implement all technical options that support you in collecting as much valuable website usage data as possible so that you can make important business decisions based on them.
Implementing Google Consent Mode is the solution to the previous ethical and legal dilemma of data collection. You should set it up on your website as soon as possible!
In short, Google Consent Mode allows us to collect data about our website visitors who do not accept the cookie window in a completely GDPR-compliant manner, with so-called pings instead of cookies, in full compliance with the applicable data management regulations.
Learn more about Google Consent Mode here.
Another important step in preparation for website owners is to set up Google Analytics 4 (GA4) measurements on their website. This should be completed by June 2022 at the latest, so that by July 1, 2023, when Google will officially discontinue further data collection in Universal Analytics, we will have at least one calendar year of data available for analysisThis is especially important in the case of web pages offering a seasonal product or service, where we want to compare the performance of the website with the data set belonging to the same period of the previous year, not the previous calendar year.
Please note that Google Analytics 4 (GA4) no longer works with cookies!
Forrás: Data illustrations by Storyset
As an online advertiser, how to prepare for the cookie phaseout?
As an online advertiser, it is worth taking the measures recommended for website owners, supplementing them with the development of so-called future-proof measurement solutions for online advertising systems.
Online advertising systems, such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads, basically measure results with so-called third-party cookies.Therefore, the preparation for the phasing out of cookies is to be found in the transformation of the measurements of our online advertisements into first-party measurements, as well as in the enrichment with the so-called first-party measurement data.
As an online advertiser, we need to implement measurement solutions such as
- Enhanced conversions for Google Ads,
- Facebook Conversions API
Both measurement solutions are implemented in the same way, so that the so-called first party, i.e. the first party data provided by the users on the website (e.g. email address, telephone number) is added to the measurement events in the given online advertising system.
As an online content provider, how to prepare for cookie phaseout?
Online content providers are encouraged to take the necessary preparation steps just like website owners and online advertisers, complemented by visiting The Privacy Sandbox and actively participating in testing, commenting on, and engaging in dialogue with planned technology solutions.
Summary
Whether you’re present on the Internet as an average Internet user, a website owner and online advertiser, or an online content provider, it’s high time you took the necessary steps to prepare for the third-party cookie phasing out in Chrome by the end of 2023.
If you don’t already have Google Analytics 4 measurements, set them up in June 2022 at the latest! If you have not yet implemented Google Consent mode on our website, please do so as soon as possible!
If you run online ads, implement Google Ads enhanced conversions and a Facebook Conversion API as soon as possible!