Cookies, consent, and user experience – the great disconnect

Industry players have been murmuring about the eventual demise of the cookie – the so-called “cookie apocalypse” – since at least 2005, when consumers first began to demand a more private browsing experience.

Google’s initial experiment with alternative methods to serve its ads without cookies came in 2013, and Apple followed in 2017 with their Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature.

The Republican version appeared in the form of a staff discussion draft written by the office of Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS). Senator Wicker said the bill is “better, stronger, clearer” than CCPA, which is reportedly the main driver for both the Democratic and the Republican bills.

Now with the advent of data privacy regulations like the European General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), it’s clear the industry urgently needs a durable alternative to the transient nature of third-party cookies.

Without third-party cookies, media owners must find another way to provide relevant ad experiences, analytics and reporting associated with ad inventory – and even to collect regulatory consent signals. It’s a pivotal change to digital publishing as we know it.

The way the cookies crumbles

Cookies pass data between web servers, browsers, and sites, and help tailor a consumer’s digital experience by collecting information on their browsing behavior.

But proliferating global data privacy regulations and the recent technology updates that remove the utility of cookies, such as Apple’s ITP, Firefox’s changes that block third-party cookies by default, and Google’s plan to introduce more stringent privacy controls to its Chrome browser – represent a fundamental shift in the way the internet works.

Combined with the increasing global data privacy regulations, media owners can no longer rely on third-party data to support ad inventory sales or meet the requirements of compliance.

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