You know that annoying friend?
The one that always changes plans at the last minute? Yeah, you know the one.
They can't stick to the script; they find reasons (often mysteriously) for changing the plans, or adding to the plans, or just cancelling them outright. They do it so often that at some point you just become immune to it. You guess what's going to change before it happens and you even stop yourself from committing to some plans knowing that they probably won't happen anyway. You know the feeling.
Google is that annoying friend.
After years of commitment to phasing out third-party cookies, it seems the mega-corp just couldn't bring itself to let them go entirely and has now chosen not to phase them out at all, opting instead for a new, rather vague "experience" in future releases of Chrome.
Having said that, it's no surprise this has happened. It's almost like we saw it coming, similar to that friendship we talked about. Google has been pushing its Privacy Sandbox while receiving a lot of criticism for its shortcomings, and it seems that the pushback from the likes of the CMA has put Google between a rock and a hard place.
So what does this mean for the future of cookies and tracking your data?
Well, it's not clear. Google mentioned a new experience for Chrome that will let users make informed choices about their privacy and give them the ability to modify those choices at any time. From that, and with a bit of guesswork, we can likely assume that first-party data is still going to be an extremely important piece of the puzzle in the years to come. So any current plans your business has to move to a first-party world should not be in vain and are still very much the priority approach.
So take this as a bit of saving grace; it probably means you have a little more time on your hands to put your ducks in a row and prepare your business for a first-party and third-party world.
So the headline is: "Stay the Course." Any strategies you have to empower your data through first-party should not be halted.
And if you haven't even started thinking about what you have to do... well, now's a good time to start making a move to first-party. If you need help with this, I can certainly assist. Contact me here and we can arrange a meeting to discuss.
I promise I won't change the plans at the last minute, either.
