There was much hand wringing in the industry over the last couple of days on how @Google’s announcement not to deprecate third-party cookies in #Chrome and instead give users a choice might be implemented exactly, and what the consequences might be for revenue.
Let’s look at what Google has said precisely and then look at the possible scenarios that follow for targeting unauthenticated users. What is their likelihood and the potential fallout?
Keep in mind that around one third of Chrome users have already opted out of cookies anyway using various tools. So, the below only applies to two thirds of Chrome users. Among those of users, for those that opt-out using whatever option Google will offer them to do so, targeting for now will only be minimally better than completely unauthenticated traffic. Recent studies showed that even with #PrivacySandbox, revenue losses for opt-outers will be anywhere between 20% – 80%. Google will continue to work on Privacy Sandbox, so results will become better over time, but by how much is everybody’s guess at this point.
No matter the outcome, the results will be worse to some extent for publishers, and there will be some defection of advertisers to walled gardens, #retailmedia and first-party data strategies, albeit at a slower pace than previously feared. One take-home from this is that publishers will have to continue to implement workarounds beyond the Privacy Sandbox no matter what.
Here is what Google said: “(…) we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing (…)”. Now let’s see how this will play out.
| Scenario | Description | Likelihood | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scenario 1 | Users get a once-off dialog allowing them to opt-in or -out of cookies browser-wide. “(…) they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time”, but those that opted out of course won’t ever opt back in. | Most likely scenario, since Google refers to “an informed choice” (singular). | 60% – 90%+ of users opt out depending on the website category, based on the experience we have had with @Apple’s deprecation of its ID for Advertisers (#IDFA). Impact almost as bad as the previously planned global deprecation of cookies, but without Google getting blamed. |
| Scenario 2 | Cookies are on by default, opting out of cookies browser-wide is hidden in the settings. | Possible, since there is only mention of “a new user experience”, but not a prompt. Less likely though, since Google won’t want to expose itself to criticism of doing something shady around privacy. | Opt-out rates probably below 20%. Much less of an impact than global deprecation. |
| Scenario 3 | A GDPR-like experience in which users need to opt-in or -out of cookies on a site-by-site basis. | Still less likely, again, since Google referred to “an informed choice” (singular). | GDPR opt-out rates are all over the place but seem to be mostly around 30% – 40%. But many users ignore the GDPR prompts, and for those, cookies are off by default in most cases, so effective opt-out rates could be as high as 70% – 80% (if implemented identically with GDPR). |
| Scenario 4 | Privacy authorities (most importantly the UK’s CMA and ICO) like this as little as the current iteration of Privacy Sandbox and we’re all back to square one. | Unlikely, since the CMA’s first statement on Google’s announcement did not sound like they didn’t like the idea. Ultimately this depends on the implementation Google chooses. | Now what? Perhaps global deprecation after all. |
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