Google’s Push to Cookie-Less World: What It Means for Website Owners
- by Ilona K.
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Last month, Google has disabled cookies for 1% of Chrome users. A move marked a countdown to Q3 2024 when Google plans to ramp up the experiment to 100% of its browser users. What exactly does it mean for you as a business (and website) owner?
Google is going ahead with one of the most important changes in the digital industry: the way businesses track user behavior online. In other words, Google started to restrict the usage of third-party cookies – a technology that tracks user activity on the websites and allows businesses to target them with ads related to their previous online behavior.
How do cookies work?
In case you’re new to the whole concept of cookies, here is how they work.
- A user visits a website through a mobile or desktop browser.
- Each visit to a website leaves a small fragment of code in the browser, noting which user has visited which website.
- Companies running the browsers (for example, Google running Chrome) can compile detailed (yet anonymised) profiles of users and their website visiting preferences.
- Businesses using digital ad platforms (for example, Google ads) can track users as they surf the internet and serve them targeted ads.
For example, if you have browsed for tickets or holidays online, there is a high chance you’d see a travel agent’s website in ads next time you log in to social media ads. Cookies enable the latter travel business to know you’ve shown interest in travel products and visited relevant websites, thus a holiday ad might be relevant for you as a user.
What is happening with cookies?
Back in January 2020, Google announced that its browser Chrome would no longer accept third-party marketing cookies. Initially the change was planned to be rolled out by the end of 2022, but then Google gave the industry an extension till mid-2024.
On 4th January 2024, Google confirmed that Chrome started restricting third-party cookies by default for 1% of users. This small-scale test (yet covering around 30 million Chrome users) comes ahead of a wider phase-out plan to remove third-party cookies for all Chrome users in Q3 2024.
The address bar for Chrome browsers that restrict third-party cookies will show an “eye” icon on a site that attempts to access third-party cookies:
Third-party cookies were bread and butter for digital advertisers due to efficient cross-website user behavior tracking. However, in the recent Deloitte survey, 65% respondents expressed profound concerns regarding the excessive use of cookies and its potential impact on their personal data.
According to Google, eliminating third-party cookies gives an opportunity to boost user privacy and data security. The company also ensured website owners that the new cookie-less world will be supported by the new standards in user data processing.
Why should you care about Google’s new cookie policy?
To begin with, Google Chrome has approximately ⅔ of global browser market share. So there is a high chance that a large proportion of your target audience uses it – and a large portion of your website traffic comes from it.
Secondly, over 42% of the websites globally use cookies. If your website is one of them and you do a lot of targeted advertising online to reach out to customers, the loss of third-party cookies will affect your business online. Moreover, 75% of marketers worldwide rely on third-party cookies in their digital activations.
Finally, in a 2023 survey among marketers worldwide, the lack of preparedness for a cookie-less online world was voted second amongst concerns in media and marketing, with 39% of respondents mentioning it. Roughly 3 out of 10 marketers also expressed concern about losing access to third-party data – a challenge closely related to cookies.
In a nutshell, if you use third-party cookies as a business, the change driven by Google will impact your ad policies, will potentially require you to tweak your website, and will force you to explore options to get ready for a cookie-less future. In fact, 59% of businesses worldwide have accelerated the readiness for cookie-less operations as a high priority.
What can you do to prep for a cookie-less world?
As a website owner, the best thing you can do right now is to assess how your website, its services and your marketing activities handle the loss of third-party cookies. Between now and Q3 2024, there is still time to cover 3 steps to access your compatibility and make necessary changes.
- Understand third-party cookie phaseout.
Explore the topic in a bit more detail and understand how the change will impact your website functionality.
- Audit your use of cookies
At this stage, the scale of activity will differ per business and website. Auditing the type and areas of using cookies is crucial to understand how your particular business will be affected, and plan for alternative solutions.
- Test for breakage
During the phase-out period, Google offers support to website owners. If your site or a service you depend on is breaking with third-party cookies disabled, you should file an issue on the breakage tracker.
In the meantime, work with your marketing specialists to discover alternative solutions to replace third-party cookies. Some of those are:
- Google Topics: a part of the Google Sandbox enabling advertisers to target ads without compromising user privacy. Instead of tracking individual browsing history, “Topics” identify categories of the sites they visit (e.g. fashion or travel).
- Influencer ads: some businesses increasingly turn onto social media influencers (or creators) as a conveyors of their brand and product to a relevant audience.
- First-party data: focusing on accessing the availability of first-party data from sales and other user interactions to create meaningful customer profiles.
To sum up, Google’s push for a cookie-less world means a major shift in the online industry, mainly in user tracking and digital marketing. It’s crucial to understand the impact and prepare your website for a full rollout later this year.
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