The ad industry is working hard to accommodate Google's plans to remove third-party cookies on its Chrome platform. Fortunately, the deadline has been pushed back to 2023 and there is more time to prepare for this change that the sector perceives as a revolution.
Adaptation is key to survival, since the impact of not adequately preparing for this reality will mean a decrease in turnover of 10,000 million dollars, according to the State of Data report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).
For this reason, according to a recent survey, one of the main concerns of the advertising industry will be to adapt to this change. For 8% of those surveyed it will be the main priority, for 52% it will be one of their main priorities and 18% are planning to address the problem in 2022 and only 4% will address the issue when third party cookies disappear in 2023.
However, there is still no majority opinion indicating the strategy to address a future without third-party cookies.
But to help overcome this challenge facing the industry, Google has introduced Topics, an interest-based advertising system whose main objective is to improve user privacy. This new system is included within the Privacy Sandbox initiative. The proposal aims to create technologies that protect the privacy of individuals online and give companies and developers tools to build thriving digital businesses.
What is Topics, and how will it help the advertising industry get through a world without third-party cookies?
With Topics, it is the browser that defines locally and without the intervention of an external server a set of themes that are representative of the user's interests in the week based on their browsing history.
In this way, every user who visits a web page that supports the Topics API sends three themes corresponding to the last three weeks to the web. Information that site administrators may or may not share with advertisers.
In addition, users will also be able to remove themes from the browser or disable the feature completely. In this way, it will be able to better control the information that advertisers obtain from your visit to a web page.
The future without cookies will give more importance to own data
Given this scenario, advertising companies will have to invest more money in first-hand cookies, those that are obtained after the user has given their informed consent.
The change will see many platforms move towards more algorithmic and data-driven attribution models.
Artificial intelligence will play an even more important role, and investment in technology will be key to finding the necessary allies to overcome a new context that will increase user confidence in digital advertising.
