Third-party cookies are here to stay as Google pivots

Google has backtracked on its cookie plans once again, this time scrapping its decision to offer users a prompt to opt out of third-party cookies.

“We’ve made the decision to maintain our current approach to offering users third-party cookie choice in Chrome and will not be rolling out a new standalone prompt for third-party cookies,” said Anthony Chavez, vice president, Google Privacy Sandbox in a blog post.

Instead, Google says users can continue to use Chrome’s Privacy and Security Settings to block or enable third-party cookie tracking.

Why it matters: The ad industry has been bracing for the loss of cookies since Google announced its plans to deprecate them back in January 2020.

• Marketers have scrambled to prepare for a cookieless world by investing in first-party data, marketing mix models (MMM), and other tools to fill the expected data void.
• 62% of brand marketers said first-party data would become more important over the next two years, according to October 2024 data from Econsultancy.

But with this decision, it seems cookies aren’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future—privacy laws notwithstanding.

However, that doesn’t mean marketers should abandon their attempts to diversify their targeting strategies.

• Between Safari and Firefox, over a third (34.9%) of US browsers already turn off third-party cookies by default, according to our analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf.
• “And there are other reasons to become less reliant on cookies. Omnichannel advertising, for one,” she wrote in a LinkedIn post.
• Marketers that want to connect consumer journeys across digital channels should invest in signal-agnostic identity solutions, minimizing the risk of disruption from additional regulation.

The reasoning: Google says “a lot” has changed since the Privacy Sandbox initiative was announced in 2019, including accelerated adoption of privacy-enhancing technologies, an evolving regulatory landscape, and new opportunities to “safeguard and secure” browsing experiences with AI.

The company also acknowledged that, despite its work on the Privacy Sandbox, “it remains clear that there are divergent perspectives on making changes that could impact the availability of third-party cookies.”

Looking ahead: Google will continue to enhance privacy features in Chrome’s Incognito mode, which already blocks third-party cookies. This includes IP Protection, launching in Q3 2025.

Google will continue to gather feedback on its Privacy Sandbox APIs, which may “have a different role in supporting the ecosystem,” in the future.

This was originally featured in the EMARKETER Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.