Goodbye internet cookies. Big money against the right not to be traced

In early 2020, Google announced that its current market-dominant browser, Chrome, would stop storing third-party cookies, which are small files that allow users to track a user and personalize the content they provide, in two years (1). The mood in the world of media and advertising boils down to the statement: "This is the end of the Internet as we know it."

HTTP Cookie (translated as cookie) is a small piece of text that a website sends to a browser and that the browser sends back the next time the website is accessed. Mainly used to maintain sessions for example, by creating and sending a temporary ID after logging in. However, it can be used more widely with storing any datawhich can be encoded as character string. As a result, the user does not have to enter the same information every time they return to that page or move from one page to another.

The cookie mechanism was invented by a former employee of Netscape Communications − Lou Montugliegoand standardized according to RFC 2109 in collaboration with David M. Kristol in 1997. The current standard is described in RFC 6265 from 2011.

Fox blocks, Google responds

Almost since the advent of the Internet печенье used to collect user data. They were and still are great tools. Their use has become widespread. Almost all subjects of the online advertising market used печенье for targeting, retargeting, showing ads or creating user behavior profiles. There were situations strons internetwhere several dozen different entities store cookies.

Huge growth in revenue from Internet advertising the last 20 years mainly because of the micro-targeting that third-party cookies provide. When digital advertising This has helped achieve unprecedented audience segmentation and attribution, helping you tie your marketing strategy to results in ways that were nearly unattainable in more traditional forms of media.

Consumers i privacy advocates for years, they have become increasingly concerned about how some companies use third-party cookies to track users without transparency or explicit consent. Especially the look advertiser retargeting sending targeted ads made this type of tracking more visible, which annoyed many users. All this led to increase in the number of people using ad blockers.

At this time, it looks like the days of third-party cookies are numbered. They should disappear from the Internet and share the fate of flash technology or aggressive advertising familiar to older Internet users. Announcements of their decline began with Fire Foxwho blocked everything third party tracking cookies (2)

We've already dealt with third-party cookie blocking in Apple's Safari browser, but this hasn't generated wider comment yet. However, Firefox traffic is a much bigger issue that has taken the market by surprise. It happened at the end of 2019. Google's ads for Chrome are reading as a reaction to these moves, as users will start migrating en masse to much better privacy protections. program with a fox in the logo.

2. Block tracking cookies in Firefox

"Building a More Private Network"

Changes to managing cookies in Chrome (3) were announced by Google two years in advance, so should be expected in first half of 2022. However, not everyone believes that there is reason for great concern about this.

3. Disable cookies in Chrome

First, because they refer to third-party "cookies", that is, not to the main direct publisher of the website, but to its partners. Modern site combines content from different sources. For example, news and weather may come from third party providers. Websites partner with technology partners to enable them to deliver relevant ads showing products and services that are more of interest to end users. Third party cookies that help recognize users on other websites are used to providing relevant content and advertising.

Deleting third party cookies will have different consequences. For example, saving and signing in to external services will not work, and in particular, it will not be possible to use authentication with social network accounts. It will also prevent you from tracking so-called Ad Conversion Paths, i.e. advertisers will not be able to accurately track the performance and relevance of their ads as they are now because it is impossible to determine exactly what users are clicking on and what actions they perform. It's not like advertisers should worry, because publishers live off advertising revenue.

In my Google blog post Justin Schuh, Chrome's CTO, explained that removing third-party cookies is intended to "create a more private web." However, opponents of the change respond that third-party cookies do not in fact disclose personal data to these parties against the user's will. In practice, users on the open Internet are identified by a random identifier.and advertising and technical partners may only have access to undefined user interests and behavior. The exceptions to this anonymity are those that collect and store personal information, personal connections and friend information, search and purchase history, and even political opinions.

According to Google's own data, the proposed changes would result in a 62% drop in publisher revenue. This will hit mainly those publishers or companies that cannot rely on strong base of registered users. Another implication could be that after these changes, more advertisers may turn to giants like Google and Facebook as they can control and measure ad audiences. And maybe that's all.

Or is it good for publishers?

Not everyone is desperate. Some people see these changes as an opportunity for publishers. When third-party cookie targeting disappear, essential cookies, i.e. those that come directly from web publishers, will become more important, the optimists say. They believe that data from publishers can become even more valuable than it is today. Moreover, when it comes to ad server technologypublishers can switch to the main page entirely. Thanks to this, campaigns can be displayed almost the same as before the changes in browsers, and the entire advertising business will be on the side of the publishers.

Some people believe that ad money in online campaigns will remain transferred from behavioral targeting model to contextual models. Thus, we will witness the return of decisions from the past. Instead of ads based on browsing history, users will receive ads tailored to the content and theme of the page they are displayed on.

Moreover, in place печенье may appear user IDs. This solution is already used by the largest market players. Facebook and Amazon are working on user IDs. But where can you get such a certificate? Now, if a publisher has some kind of online service that a user needs to sign in to, they have user IDs. This could be a VoD service, a mailbox, or a subscription. Identifiers can be assigned different data – such as gender, age, etc. Another advantage is that there is one identifier assigned to a personnot for a specific device. This way your ads are aimed at real people.

In addition, other data that is not directly related to the user, but indirectly, can be used for targeted advertising. It could be targeting your ads based on weather, location, device, operating system…

Apple has also joined the tycoons in hitting the online advertising business. iOS 14 update in the summer of 2020, it gave the user the option to turn off the user's ad tracking through dialog boxes asking them if they are "allowed to follow" and prompting apps not to "follow". It's hard to imagine people specifically looking for options to keep track of. Apple has also introduced a smart reporting feature. safari privacywhich will clearly show who is following you.

This does not mean that Apple completely blocks advertisers. However, it introduces completely new privacy-focused game rules, which developers find in a new version of the documentation called SKAdNetwork. These rules allow, in particular, for anonymous data collection without the need, for example, to have a user's personal database in the database. This breaks down advertising models that have been used for years, such as CPA and others.

As you can see, around inconspicuous little cookies there is a big war for even more money. Their end means the end of many other things that channeled cash flows for many online market players. At the same time, this end is, as usual, the beginning of something new, it is still not known exactly what.

See also: