Google Hits “Reject” on Cookies

Last Wednesday, Google shook up the digital advertising landscape by announcing that they would no longer support individual tracking of users across websites starting in 2022. While they announced last year that their uber popular browser Chrome would stop its support for third party cookies, they announced in a company blog post a rejection of this practice across the board:

“Today, we’re making explicit that once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products.”

So, what does this actually mean? 

Currently most advertisers’ business run on cookies: code that tracks users’ movement and browsing data as they use different sites and come into contact with different ads while using a browser. While this is powerful data for advertisers, people have been criticizing this practice because of privacy concerns.

To address these concerns, Google started an initiative called the Privacy Sandbox aimed at enhancing privacy on the Internet. The main idea behind the Sandbox is instead of serving personalized target ads to users based on their individual user data, individuals with similar interests and browsing trends are grouped together and then targeted by advertisers. That way your individual data is a little more private because you are a part of a crowd of similar users.

Google accounted for 52% of last year’s global digital ad spending of $292 billion, according to Jounce Media - a digital ad consultancy – so this announcement by Google serves as a massive shakeup for the entire digital advertising industry. The announcement on Wednesday drew mixed reviews from the advertising industry with some executives saying that even if this move will be good for consumers, it could solidify the tech giant’s stranglehold on the industry.