When Google announced that it would be phasing out its Chrome browser support for third-party cookies in 2022, the message sent ripples of uncertainty throughout the ad tech industry. And now 3rd party cookies are on the way out, the industry is preparing for a future without 3rd party cookies once they are completely deprecated. It is crucial to understand the impact and find alternative solutions for advertisers and marketers. It’s time to reimagine a future with cookieless identity data products to combat marketers’ dwindling reliance as browsers like Chrome stop supporting third-party cookies. 

First and foremost, what are 1st and 3rd party data/cookies?

First party data is any data collected by the brand who owns the relationship with a consumer and used by that brand to enrich that consumer’s experience. A few examples of this data include a brand loyalty program, purchase history, communication preferences, or consumer-supplied demographic information. Though there are limitations to 1st party cookies as they are limited to same-site tracking and activation, which cannot be leveraged for tracking across the web and sold to other parties. 

Third party data, on the other hand, is information that was aggregated and made available for purchase. A few examples of this data include publicly available demographic data, online behavioral data, or consumer preferences. Traditionally, it is very common for brands to use a combination of 1st party and 3rd party data to drive deeper relationships with their consumers and serve relevant ads based on those data. 

The new reality is to get past an environment where advertisers rely on third-party cookies by linking a hashed email to a device ID without disclosing the owner. As the industry evolves to embrace alternative identity standards, it looks like we would rely heavily on first-party cookies and find alternative ways such as hashed emails, PII-match, segment-level data activation to replace 3rd party cookies. Though any new product would have to address the vulnerabilities in the cookieless world:  scale, fraud, or future-proof.

The next blogpost will focus on the future of mobile cookies. Stay tuned!