3rd-party Cookies

On April 18th, Google published the results from Google Ads’ interest-based advertising testing, where, among other tools, Topics API was analyzed. We are happy that the Google Ads team joined RTB House and Criteo in openly publishing findings from experiments with Privacy Sandbox APIs.

In the report, the Google Ads team compares the effectiveness of applying Topics API, contextual signals, and publisher first-party IDs instead of cookies for Interest-Based Advertising (IBA). Third-party cookies were allowed in this experiment for use cases unrelated to targeting, such as frequency capping and measurement.

This article aims to complete the round of quality tests performed on the sampled Seller-Defined Audiences signals we received from the sell side. While the previous article investigated contextual SDAs, this one will focus on user SDAs and verify how they reflect reality. The tests in this section varied from the ones performed on the contextual signals as the nature of the user type differs. The first test relied on a manual check of an assignment mechanism, while the second one was based on a survey campaign.

The Privacy Sandbox timeline states that in Q3 2024, “Chrome will phase out support for third-party cookies over a two-month period.” Whether or not Q3 2024 is the right time is an important question, but in this blog post, we’d like to focus on the second aspect of the deprecation—the duration of the time over which it reaches 100% of users. We will argue that a two-month timeframe (a “cliff”) is too quick and therefore, dangerous. To maximize the chances of AdTech successfully transitioning to a cookieless world, the deprecation ramp-up should be more prolonged, gradual, and known in advance.

Cookies play an essential role in the modern internet. These small pieces of data stored in your web browser can do everything from saving login details to enhancing website performance to helping marketers show users products that they will love. However, not all cookies are made equal, and there are significant differences between first-party and third-party cookies.

Brand safety is something you’ll often hear marketers talk about, and at face value, it seems pretty simple. It’s all about the methods you can use to help to protect your brand from being damaged during the advertising process. However, once you ask marketers exactly how they protect your brand, things get a little more complicated.

To some, it might simply mean ensuring that messaging, imagery, or messenger doesn’t land you in hot water. For others, brand safety includes everything from what platforms you show your ads on to ensuring you’re not caught off guard by current events. To help you get to grips with this essential topic, this article will try to answer a crucial question: What is brand safety, and why should you care about it?

Despite their seemingly innocent name, cookies have found themselves at the heart of one of the internet’s biggest privacy revolutions. Specifically, third-party cookies have come under fire from privacy-advocacy groups, ultimately leading Google to work towards a cookieless future. This change will have significant implications for advertisers, as third-party cookies have been an essential targeting technology since their inception.

Let’s dive into the implications of Google’s decision and how you can prepare for the cookieless future.