Marketers are panicking over Google's plan to yank cookies from advertising
- Digital advertisers are panicking over Google's decision to remove third-party cookies from its Chrome browser.
- Without cookies, marketers worry that they won't be able to target or measure digital ads.
- Adtech companies creating new products and ways to get around the cookie limitations, but some marketers say those moves are short-term fixes.
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Digital advertisers are grappling with a number of changes that threaten their business, but especially Google's recent decision to remove third-party cookies from its Chrome browser in the next two years.
At the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Springs, California, this week, talk of the Chrome move darkened the mood among publishers, marketers, and adtech companies.
Without cookies, marketers worry that they won't be able to target or measure digital ads. Adtech companies are creating new products and ways to get around the limitations, though some marketers say those moves are short-term fixes.
"You have a class of companies that are squeezed for short-term returns and companies that are thinking about the long term and are building for growth and sustainability," said Matt Barash, head of strategy and business development at adtech firm AdColony. "There is chaos."
Adtech companies are trying to steal from Facebook and Google's playbook
Marketers have long relied on cookies to power digital advertising, and the move sent ripples through the industry. According to Google's estimates, ads without that third-party data would plummet in cost by 57%, to publishers' detriment, though some publishing and tech execs think the drop will be more significant. For example, when Mozilla-owned Firefox removed third-party cookies last year, some said that ad rates crashed and have yet to recover.
The IAB Tech Lab this week called for publishers, advertisers, and adtech companies to unite to create standards and a replacement for third-party cookies on browsers like Chrome, Apple's Safari and Mozilla-owned Firefox. Dubbed Project Rearc, the effort is eventually supposed to include a consumer ad campaign to reach 2 billion people.
"Everything we do as an industry was built around cookies, since that has been the only open standard built into browsers. We need to now rebuild around new, more privacy-forward, open standards," said Jordan Mitchell, head of identity, data and privacy at the IAB Tech Lab.
Big adtech firms that help publishers sell digital ads like Index Exchange and OpenX are pitching marketers on the idea of people-based advertising - a term that Facebook coined years ago.
Index Exchange, for example, is building a product for publishers that uses hashed email addresses to create an ID for targeting. The firm is also working on a product that lets people opt out of sharing their data.
"The cookie has always been this crutch that so much of the industry was predicated on," said Mike O'Sullivan, VP of product at Index Exchange. "It was holding us back from being able to create a compelling solution to match Facebook and Google."
Other adtech firms LiveRamp, The Trade Desk, and ID5 are pitching advertisers ID technology that is an alternative to cookies. LiveRamp is also using its acquisition of Faktor last year to sell publishers consent-management software that publishers use to collect first-party data.
"There needs to be a way for brands and publishers to find the same audience," said Anneka Gupta, LiveRamp's president and head of products and platforms.
However, some marketers said it's too soon to gauge how successful LiveRamp, The Trade Desk and other companies will be because the specifics in regulations like California's privacy law are still being ironed out.
"It could be the calm before the storm," said one brand marketer exec at the conference.