Page 12 - Adnews Magazine May-June 2021

Investigation
The race to continue tracking
The way advertisers track and target consumers is about to get a lot more complicated without third-party cookies. AdNews looks at why they are disappearing and what comes next.
Third-party cookies have been critical to online advertising, credited with fueling its growth over the years, so their demise has been described as the most significant shakeup the industry has seen. “The online industry has
beenoperatingand
relying on cookies
and now all of a sud-
den after two dec-
ades it’s all about to go away,” says MediaCom head of digital Minsun Collier.
“It’s one of those things that we all need to get to. It’s also an opportunity to get best practices into the digital advertising world because some things have been ques- tionable so it’s a great time to pivot and be able to do some really good marketing.”
Third-party cookies, which track users for targeted advertising, are to be phased out by Google in 2022 in the name of user privacy. To keep digital adver- tising, which is estimated to be worth US$400 billion globally, tracking along there’s been
a long list of alternatives from industry
players, including Google, Oracle,
Liveramp, and more.
The beginning of the end of third- party cookies began in 2017 when Apple blocked the cross-site tracking of con- sumers on Safari with its Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) tool. Apple
is set to turn on its ITP tool by default
in late April, with consumers having
to opt in to cross-site tracking. Other companies made similar moves, with Mozilla Firefox also turning on its Enhanced Tracking Protection by default on its browser for all users in 2020. In January 2020, Microsoft released
a new version of its browser Microsoft Edge with new privacy tools, including a choice for users to choose between three levels of third-party cookie blocking.
Given that Google Chrome has a significant share of the supply of web browsers globally, including an estimated market share of 63% of desktop devices in Australia according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), its announcement early last year that it is phasing out third-party cookies by 2022 spun the industry into a frenzy. And unlike the other big players, Chrome wasn’t giving users the ability to opt in
W O R D S B Y
MARIAM CHEIK-HUSSEIN