Since the dawn of time (January 2020), advertisers have been anxiously awaiting Google’s final decision regarding when it would phase out third-party cookies in Chrome. Then, on July 22nd, Google made headlines by announcing it was reversing its plan to eliminate cookies altogether. This decision comes as a relief to advertisers, who, up until this point, had been diligently working to establish a strategy to prepare for Cookiegate.

Hold up, how did we get here?

Google’s plan to eliminate third-party cookies has been evolving for over four years. Initially announced in 2020 with a 2022 deadline, the timeline has been pushed back three times – most recently in April to 2025. The delays were attributed to several factors, including heightened scrutiny from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and concerns from the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Despite all this, the journey toward a cookie-free future has not been in vain.

Rather, it has driven advertisers to explore alternative solutions for audience targeting and measurement outside Google’s ecosystem. Dependence on Google’s data has posed challenges, including issues with transparency in audience refresh rates and a tendency to overstate performance metrics.

So, what does the future hold?

Google plans to advance its privacy strategy by rolling out new features in Chrome giving users greater control over their privacy preferences. Additionally, the company will continue to develop the Privacy Sandbox API, aiming to offer innovative solutions for privacy and data protection. We believe this is likely in the industry’s best interest, as performance marketing is so heavily reliant on the usage of cookie-data. Unfortunately, however, many advertisers are over-reliant and abuse retargeting altogether. The cookie announcement helped push advertisers, CMOs, and agencies into re-imagining a world where these capabilities would not be at their fingertips. This pushed everyone to perform the necessary reconsideration of their attribution strategies. If we’ve learned one thing over the last three years, it’s that the majority of the advertising industry wasn’t ready for the cookie to crumble – it would’ve sent the industry into chaos. 

Of course, we at Arm Candy were excited for the opportunity this chaos could bring. As advertisers who were ready, we expected to be able to take advantage of such a significant change – but for now, we’ll be standing by for the next big industry disruption!