Google�s Call for Change and What it Means for Advertisers

Last week, Google Chrome announced a vision for a future without third-party cookies. Cookies have been used for years to improve the online experience, retain login information, serve relevant ads, measure advertising effectiveness and more.

What’s the news?
Google has announced a vision for a future without third-party cookies, achieved through a set of new open standards and industry collaboration over the next couple of years. The goal is to enable legitimate advertising and measurement use cases for the ad-supported web while protecting consumer privacy. Crossix supports the direction and applauds Google for choosing to pursue this goal through open standards and not Google-specific solutions.

What’s changing and when?
While Google has provided two-year timeframe for when they would like the industry to evolve, nothing has actually happened yet. Today, third-party cookies are a critical part of the business model of the Internet, but it is time to evolve to a better, privacy-safe solution for targeting, measurement and other legitimate applications.

Nothing will change in the short- and medium-term as the industry pursues this future state and publishers, advertisers and intermediaries adjust.

Who will be impacted by long-term changes to third-party cookies?
Pretty much everyone. Anyone who publishes digital content, advertises online or uses the internet could potentially be impacted by changes to the infrastructure of third-party cookies. A tremendous amount of money is tied to the targeting and measurement tools currently enabled by third-party cookies. In fact, Google’s own analytics indicated that publisher revenue would go down 52% without third-party cookies in place. Users, publishers and advertisers all deserve a seat at the table and should help shape the solution over the next few years.

It’s important that Google – together with advertisers and the advertising technology industry – gets this right.

What’s next for Crossix customers?
In the short-term and medium-term, there will be no impact on Crossix and our products.

Looking forward, we believe a phase-out of third-party cookies presents an opportunity for the industry to upgrade to better, privacy-safe solutions. In our 15-year company history, we have a proven track record of innovation and we have continued to improve our solutions as digital advertising technology changes and evolves. Our measurement solutions evolved from research panels, expanding to publisher-based panels, to cookies, eventually adding mobile and IP-based tracking.

Crossix remains committed to our core mission of providing privacy-safe analytics to our clients and, together with our partners, we will embrace the coming changes while continuing to help health brands maximize the effectiveness of their marketing investments.