Refresher: What are Third-Party Cookies? In a Nutshell…
Websites use third-party cookies to track users across multiple sites. These cookies are set by a domain other than the domain that the user is visiting, typically by advertisers or analytics services. When a user visits a website that contains third-party advertising or tracking code, a cookie is placed on their browser. This cookie collects data about the user's online behavior, such as the sites visited, time spent, and interactions with content.
As the user continues to browse the internet, the cookie sends this information back to the third-party server, allowing advertisers to build a profile of the user's interests and habits. This data is then used for targeted advertising and web analytics, helping companies understand user behavior, measure the effectiveness of their ads, and optimize their websites for better user experience.
Google Chrome is Phasing Out Third-Party Cookies
On Jan. 4, Chrome disabled third-party cookie usage for 1% of the platform’s total users. While 1% may not seem very significant, keep in mind that Chrome has over 3 billion users worldwide. At the time I am writing this blog, roughly 30 million Chrome users have had third-party cookies disabled from their browsers.
Google plans to eliminate 100% of third-party cookie usage in Chrome by Q3 of this year! Here is their own statement so you get a clear picture of why this update is happening:
“Our goal with the Privacy Sandbox is to reduce cross-site tracking while still enabling the functionality that keeps online content and services freely accessible by everyone. Deprecating and removing third-party cookies encapsulates the challenge, as they enable critical functionality across sign-in, fraud protection, advertising, and generally the ability to embed rich, third-party content in your sites—but at the same time they're also the key enablers of cross-site tracking.
In our previous major milestone, we launched a range of APIs providing a privacy-focused alternative to today's status quo for use cases like identity, advertising, and fraud detection. With alternatives in place, we can now move on to begin phasing out third-party cookies.”
Browsers Leading the Way in Privacy
It’s worth noting that Chrome is following a path that has already been paved by other industry leaders. Several major web browsers have either restricted or completely blocked third-party cookies by default, primarily due to privacy concerns. Here are some notable examples:
- Safari: Apple's Safari browser has been a leader in blocking third-party cookies. It uses Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) to restrict them, significantly limiting cross-site tracking.
- Firefox: Mozilla Firefox blocks third-party cookies by default through its Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) feature. This feature is part of Mozilla's commitment to user privacy and security.
- Brave: The Brave browser is designed with a strong focus on privacy and automatically blocks third-party cookies and other tracking mechanisms.
- Microsoft Edge: Microsoft Edge offers tracking prevention settings that can be adjusted by the user, and it can block third-party cookies depending on the chosen privacy level.
Impact on Data Collection for Analytics & Advertising
Your data collection capability for analytics & advertising platforms will be negatively impacted by the phase-out of third-party cookies.
The removal of third-party cookies will significantly impact marketers' ability to collect data in platforms like Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Google Ads, leading to several changes in the digital marketing landscape:
- Reduced Cross-Site Tracking: Without third-party cookies, tracking users across different websites becomes more challenging. This limits the ability to gather detailed user journey data, affecting insights into multi-site behavior and cross-site conversion tracking.
- Changes in Ad Targeting and Personalization: The precision of ad targeting and personalization may decrease, leading marketers to adopt broader targeting strategies and possibly see changes in ad performance metrics.
- Use of Machine Learning and AI: Platforms like GA4 are expected to use more machine learning algorithms to fill in the gaps where data is missing. This might involve modeling user behavior based on aggregated data sets to make predictions and estimations.
Embracing Server-Side Tagging
Updating your analytics & advertising tagging to utilize server-side tagging will help you improve your data collection capabilities.
What is Server-Side Tagging?
Server-side tagging involves handling and processing tags (small pieces of code used for tracking and analytics) on a server, rather than directly in a user's browser. This method shifts much of the data collection and third-party integrations to a server environment (first-party), offering improved site performance, enhanced data security, and greater control over data collection and processing. By processing data server-side, it reduces the reliance on client-side technologies like cookies, helping with compliance to privacy regulations and improving user experience by reducing browser load.
Using a cloud server & Google Tag Manager server-side (sGTM), we can deploy marketing & analytics tagging to relay first-party data to our own server before those signals reach a third-party platform. We will talk much more in-depth about sGTM & server-side tagging in later blogs, so stay tuned!
In Conclusion
Overall, the removal of third-party cookies will push marketers towards more privacy-centric and user-focused strategies, requiring adjustments in data collection, analysis, and ad targeting methods. Utilizing server-side tagging can help your organization bypass many of the headwinds that will be felt as third-party cookie deprecation moves forward in 2024.
For those looking to adopt server-side tagging, it is important to begin strategizing as soon as possible. If your organization uses a variety of ads and analytics platforms, has a significant amount of legacy tagging, or operates multiple domains, setting up server-side measurement may be time-consuming. It's important to allocate adequate time and resources for this transition.
For all your measurement needs, including server-side tagging, reach out to our team at MMP!