Mark your calendars for Jan. 4, 2024, all you deprecation skeptics.
That’s the day Google will release a new browser feature called Tracking Protection. When enabled, it will automatically cut off a website’s access to third-party cookies.
On Jan. 4, Chrome will activate Tracking Protection for 1% of a randomly selected group of Chrome users globally.
People will know they’ve been chosen if they see a modal pop up on the right side of the address bar in their browser when they open Chrome either on desktop or Android. The modal will say “Browse with more privacy” beside an eye-shaped icon with a strike through it.
So long as the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, which has oversight of the Chrome Privacy Sandbox, doesn’t halt the implementation process over competition concerns, Google appears on track to completely phase out third-party cookies in Chrome by the end of next year.
This is “a key milestone in our Privacy Sandbox initiative,” wrote Anthony Chavez, VP of product management for the Privacy Sandbox, in a blog post on Thursday announcing the rollout.
This is not a test
In September – more than three and a half years after first announcing its plan to phase out third-party cookies – Google officially made the APIs in the Chrome Privacy Sandbox generally available.
From that point, developers and ad tech companies could more easily ramp up their testing efforts and integrate the APIs into their own solutions.
But testing overall has been slow, particularly on the buy side.
Well over half (61%) of US marketers and media planners haven’t started testing the Chrome Privacy Sandbox, according to a survey conducted in late October by Blis and Sapio Research. Yet a full 98% of marketers say they’re concerned about signal loss and the disappearance of third-party cookies. (Go figure.)
Google is confident, however, that testing will gain momentum (although perhaps that’s because there’s no longer any choice).
Over the summer, Victor Wong, senior director of product for the Privacy Sandbox on Chrome and Android, told AdExchanger that general availability “should be a strong signal to companies that now is the time to begin integrating the APIs if they have not started already.”
Google also says it’s trying to make live testing as painless as possible, which is why Tracking Protection is rolling out so slowly.
“We’re starting with a small percentage of Chrome users so developers can test their readiness for a web without third-party cookies,” Chavez wrote.
And if it turns out that a site can’t function properly during the 1%-of-users phase, Chrome will automatically surface an option to disable Tracking Protection and temporarily switch cookies back on so as not to disrupt the browsing experience while the site works out its kinks before full-on deprecation.
A line in the sandbox
But there are some out there that would prefer to disable the Privacy Sandbox itself altogether.
In a column posted earlier this week on The Current, which is The Trade Desk’s content marketing site, the company’s VP of product, Bill Simmons, didn’t mince words on his view of the Privacy Sandbox. He called it “a massive investment in a project that could make the open internet a worse place for advertisers and publishers.”
Simmons argues that the Privacy Sandbox initiative will only lead to depressed ad prices and slower page loads while simultaneously entrenching Google’s power over the online advertising ecosystem.
“It’s unfortunate that the leadership at Google has plotted a course based on its own interests rather than those of the ad industry at large,” Simmons wrote. “To protect the privacy of users, you don’t have to create a system that makes it harder to earn revenue as an open internet publisher.”
