Mateusz Rumiński

Digital advertising has come a long way. From direct deals between brands and publishers to the extensive ecosystem that we operate in now. As did marketing campaign reporting.

In January 2020, Google announced that it will end support for third-party tracking cookies in the Google Chrome browser “within two years,” signifying major changes for retargeting Google Ads. In June 2021, this timeline was extended to 2023, June 2022 brought yet another extension to the 2nd half of 2024, and in April 2024 it was postponed to the beginning of 2025. Moreover, Google Chrome declared withdrawing 1% of 3rd-party cookies in Q1 2024 to provide a reliable environment for testing.

Other browsers, such as Safari, Firefox, and Edge, have already stopped supporting 3rd party cookies for retargeting ads. But from the marketer’s point of view, the fact that Google will also follow this trend for retargeting Google Ads is important due to Chrome’s over 60% market share. Therefore—how will retargeting work without cookies?

The digital marketing landscape is a very complex environment. There are many players with different profiles of activities addressing the diverse needs of their clients.

The process of advertising inventory purchasing has significantly evolved over the course of recent years. Another (r)evolution is right around the corner and it’s because of the deprecation of 3rd-party cookies.

Over the past two years, the entire advertising industry has been lively discussing the impending deprecation of third-party cookies and its implications for each side of the ecosystem. There are countless articles outlining the general concept of Google’s Privacy Sandbox and its alternatives, as well as assumptions on what will happen to the industry as a whole. However, when it comes to frequency capping – one of the most important tools for both publishers and advertisers, and arguably the least controversial one privacy-wise – there is not enough media coverage, apart from some calls to address the topic.

In 2023 Google announced the depreciation of third-party cookies and began the development of the Google Privacy Sandbox. However, the deadline has once again been pushed back, this time to 2025]. The reason? “The need for more time to evaluate and test the new technologies.” Despite positive developments, RTB House’s own tests of the FLEDGE proposal, with nearly 8 million ads in 50 countries, have shown that there is still plenty of work to be done to build effective cookieless alternatives.