Google Privacy Update: A marathon not a sprint

Google recently announced an almost two-year delay to its plans to bid farewell to third-party cookies. This news provides some much-needed certainty to publishers, most of which rely on advertising to support their freely available content. The removal of third-party cookies, without adequate alternatives, posed a serious risk to advertising measurement, audience targeting and advertising performance. 

This delay will mean its ‘business as usual’ for advertisers and publishers while they use this time to test and build feasible alternatives. Google has recognised that, in order to make a real impact on privacy and identity, the industry needs to move at a responsible pace and create a sustainable framework to replace the 3P cookie. 

Finding the right solution is a marathon, not a sprint and gives Venatus and our publisher partners time to explore the myriad of privacy friendly options that could solve this attribution and identity challenge.

Third-party cookies’ days are still numbered so it is essential that advertisers explore alternative options to ensure they can continue to drive return on their ad spend. In a world of limited third-party data, we expect to see advertisers return to high quality, curated contextual sites to ensure they reach the most relevant audiences.  

Publishers big and small can win here, with larger publishers leading in programmatic buys thanks to their abundance of first-party data, while smaller publishers can take their share through direct audience buys and programmatic, thanks to audience modelling, bolstered by their genre-specific content - which is ever favourable for ad targeting in this privacy-compliant world.