Google’s announcement
As announced in late 2023, Google is discontinuing the use of third-party cookies for 1% of Google Chrome users from 4th January onwards. This is the beginning of Google’s move towards a cookie-free future and it is expected that third-party cookies will be completely removed from Chrome around the halfway point of 2024. Most likely sometime around Q3. Knowing this, businesses should start monitoring the effects on their data now.
What are third-party cookies?
A cookie is a block of data that is saved to a user’s computer when a website is accessed. There is, however, a difference between first and third-party cookies. Third-party cookies are closely tied to marketing and simply put, allow businesses to take advantage of targeted advertising.
Why are Google removing third-party cookies from Chrome?
Search Engine Journal explain that Google wish to move away from previous methods of tracking in favour of new tools that improve factors such as anti-fraud and better ads targeting. Simply put, a cookie-less way of advertising.
What are the next steps?
With marketers likely noticing the effects of the loss of data, it is more important than ever to understand the core needs and behaviours of your customers.
As a business, the key to success moving forward will be to start building a marketing strategy that is not reliant on third-party cookies. A strong knowledge of your audience and how to successfully target them today should form the base for your future marketing strategy. Leveraging your existing data today will be critical for future performance, so make sure you get started as soon as possible. A good analytics tool will help you do just that. Luckily we have created a tool that not only analyses your data, but also helps you identify ways to use the data to your advantage. Read more about Fyr here!
In conclusion
As this is a recent development from Google we are still not sure how the changes will affect advertisers, we can only speculate. What we do know is that a big focus in 2024 should be to move away from third-party cookies reliant marketing strategies.
