The great earthquake that was coming in the universe of digital marketing and advertising was the death of cookies. Google announced a few years ago that Chrome would start blocking them by default. The company itself has been working to create its own alternative to cookies for advertising targeting.
For the other players, Google gave a margin of adaptation time. The change would not begin to apply until 2022, leaving years for adjustments. 2020 and 2021 were to be the time frame to work on the change. Those years have coincided with the coronavirus pandemic, something that weighed down on the plans and activity of marketers.
Earlier this year, Google said it was not going to change its forecast: cookies were not going to have a grace period . “We continue to firmly believe that our decision to stop supporting third-party cookies is the right thing to do for the privacy of users and the industry in general,” they explained then from the company.
With the arrival of 2022, the decline of the cookie would also arrive. However, despite these statements, there will eventually be a grace period. Google has just announced that it is delaying the cookie blackout to 2023. This is not to say that things will not start in 2022, but more stages will follow.
A year of grace
“For Chrome, our specific goal is to have the key technologies deployed by the end of 2022 so that the developer community begins to adopt them,” they explain from Google.
“Following our commitment to the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and in line with the commitments we have made, Chrome will progressively reduce the third-party cookies over a three-month period, starting in mid-2023 and ending in late 2023. 2023 “, they point out.
Two stages of readjustment
Thus, the calendar will have two stages. The first will start at the end of 2022 and it will be when the media and the advertising industry will need to migrate their services, to get out of cookies. This stage is estimated to last about 9 months.
Then a second stage will follow, which will begin in the middle of next year, as expected, but of the following year, 2023. It will be there when the cookies blackout occurs. Between one stage and another, tests will be carried out to see that everything is working correctly. As indicated in Marketing Dive , this delay will allow the advertising industry to have more time to develop its own alternatives, something that was generating a lot of stress and a lot of pressure right now.
In addition, it should not be forgotten, they add, that this announcement comes within the framework of a growing legal pressure against Google. The European Commission’s monopoly investigation is the latest to be announced and already includes the issue of cookies among the topics it will address.
However, this research is far from the only one. The US is also investigating whether or not Google violates antitrust regulations. Perhaps, for this reason, forcing an entire industry to abandon a standard does not come at the best time.
