Google Chrome is keeping third party cookies. Doesn't mean YOU (marketer) should too!

After years of uncertainty and confusion, 谷歌 has announced that that they're not killing third party cookies (since they are unable to get indsutry to adopt Privacy Sandbox). Google over-relied on Privacy Sandbox - so much so that this news has been announced on Privacy Sandbox's page instead of Chrome's https://privacysandbox.com/intl/en_us/news/privacy-sandbox-update/. While Privacy Sandbox was visibly destined-to-fail, Google could have handled it better by focusing on solutions like Consented First Party Data, where Google's other teams are investing heavily.

Marketers who think they can just go back to the old www (wild-wild-west / world-wide-web), would be missing the point! Following are the some of the key reasons why as marketers and businesses, you should continue your journey to First Party Data, disregarding Google's announcement:?

1. Non-Google:

Other Ad platforms don't have the control on Google Chrome like Google Ads does (The anti-trust implications of that deserve an entire post!). Meta , TikTok , Snap Inc. will continue to derisk themselves and move to reliable consented first party data to power their optimization. Google's Ad Revenue was mostly Search - which relies on brand keywords, intent and click data more than conversion data for optimization. Leaving Search spends out, more than 80% of the Digital Media Spend would still be optimized using Conversion Data, reliably coming through CAPIs.?

2. Omnichannel :

In the last three years, First Party Data provided solution to two challenges

• Browser restrictions on tracking (discussed above)
• Measuring (and optimizing for) omnichannel (Physical Stores, Call Centers etc) impact of Digital Marketing. This is a very strong value proposition and unless you're a 100% digital native with no real life user touchpoints, you're leaving a lot on the table if you are not optimizing for omnichannel conversions, enabled by first party data.?

3. Regulatory pressure :

Browsers have been imposing cookie restrictions because of rampant abuse of user data enabled by third party cookies - like piggybacking (https://www.performancemarketingworld.com/article/1817644/piggybacking) . As an advertiser, the onus of using user's data responsibly and ensuring privacy is on you. Consented First Party Data is the gold standard of compliant tracking. With over 120 countries having some version of data protection/privacy laws, regulatory pressure will continue increasing and if you want to avoid having your marketing efforts being declared illegal one fine day, you'd be better off building your marketing with first party data at it's very core.

4. Paid Advertising-Direct Marketing unification :

Most of the marketing departments (even until now) are split across paid media (Google, Meta etc spends) and direct/earned marketing (Email, SMS, Push etc). The former relying on third party cookies as 'visitor identity' and the latter needing first party data as 'customer profile'. Every marketers dream of having a true customer 360 view hasn't become a reality because advertising, the team with most money/resources, didn't need first party data - until recently. Marketing teams who have moved to first party data are already seeing the benefits of unification in forms of a holistic data structures, better exchanges between Marketing and Advertising channels and interest in building customer trust.

5. Data Quality :

Third party cookie based audiences provided by 'data sellers' has been confirmed to be extremely poor quality, and increasingly so with privacy restrictions. Several studies have exposed severe accuracy issues - same visitor being simulateous a male and a female, belonging to ALL age groups from 17 to 70, and a data accuracy of 42% for gender (less than ~50% which you could get from a random guess!!!) to name a few. First Party Data, although more sparse, is much higher quality. What you should focus on, is improving the volume of first party data collection.

There's no shortcut to long-term success.

There's no right way to do the wrong thing.

BREATHE, if you've been tired of uncertainty, but don't SIT - the journey to a compliant, privacy honoring personalization and optimization is NOT OVER!