DIGITAL MARKETING

Google delays removal of third-party cookies for another year

By our News Team | 2022

Marketers breathe a sigh of relief as the deadline for the cookie phasing-out process moves to second half of 2024.

Marketers and their digital agencies are breathing a sigh of relief following the announcement from Google last week that it will again be delaying the phasing out of cookies on Google Chrome.

This means the phasing-out deadline has now been delayed twice. Initially it was intended for this year and, up until a few days ago, marketers were working on late 2023 as the final deadline. Now the deadline moves to the second half of 2024.

Image by Nicolekoenig78 from Pixabay

Once cookies are removed from Google Chrome, companies will be heavily restricted as to how they can gather user data and then target ads according to user preferences. Google has given improved consumer privacy as the main reason for the move.

As a replacement, Google has been working on a project known as Privacy Sandbox. However, the company wants more time to refine this and to get feedback from relevant partners such as industry regulators, marketers and publishers.

Google explains its latest decision

In a blog post, Google explained that it wanted to give these partners more time to test its tools.

“The most consistent feedback we’ve received is the need for more time to evaluate and test the new Privacy Sandbox technologies before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome,” Anthony Chavez, Vice President at Google, said. “We now intend to begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024.”

Also quoted in the blog post is Townsend Feehan, Chief Executive Officer at the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe, who said: “Google’s decision to extend the timeline before phasing out third-party cookies is a welcome development for the industry that should help ensure a range of alternatives to third-party cookies that are technically robust and whose implementation has been thoroughly tested from a privacy compliance and commercial performance point of view.”

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