Here’s the old news: Chrome cookies are (eventually) going away.
Here’s the new news: Only some cookies are going away.
Google Chrome is proposing an “approach that elevates user choice,” which will undoubtedly mean more opt-outs. But will the opt-out rate be half? Two-thirds? 10%? 90%?
For the past week or so, we’ve been so caught up in Google’s revision of its all-or-nothing approach, we’ve forgotten that cookies are still going to be scarcer and scarcer.
If half of cookies go away, it would mean a cookie opt-in that roughly matches Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency. And if it’s more? Less? The percentage of cookie opt outs will depend on the type of user choice Google chooses.
Google hasn’t shared much about how it plans to gain users’ consent, but how it designs its prompt will attract the attention of regulators and draw comparisons – like the one I make on this week’s podcast – to Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency.
What might impact Google’s approach to user choice? We discuss everything from dark patterns to the regulators who are paying attention to how it designs its prompt.
Then, when Chrome deprecated cookies for 1% of its traffic in January, it revealed that some cookie-seeming IDs were still attached to this traffic, a practice called ID bridging. Our senior editor, James Hercher, covered the ensuing debate around ID bridging: Is it ethical? When is it okay? Can DSPs make informed choices, too, about whether to opt in to ID bridging?
Since much of web traffic today does not have cookies, and since the amount of cookies will decrease once Google implements its consent choices, ID bridging remains relevant. It also peels back ad tech’s varnish and exposes the Jerry-rigged parts below the hood.
