Companies like Apple and Google have been facing pressure from consumers, privacy groups and regulators for years now with regards to consumer privacy. How often does it happen that you browse a website and advertisements begin to follow you on the internet! That’s called retargeting. The primary method of retargeting consumers on the internet is through a process of dropping a cookie on consumers browser when they visit a website and assigning an anonymous identity for building a persona which is then targeted with ads. This cookie is called a 3P or a third party cookie because it does not belong to the website that the consumer is visiting, but instead belongs to the platform that displays Ad on the website. Building a persona also involves data sharing between media and data companies, sometimes with user consent and at other times without. It’s a wild west and this is what is being tamed for the past few years by regulators, with EU taking lead with GDPR laws. While Apple moved rapidly to block 3P cookies, Google has postponed its plans twice to December 2023 to block all 3P cookies on Chrome browser, thereby giving perhaps itself and the ad tech ecosystem more time to react to this change.

So, will consumers really benefit from these changes? Or will new solutions be equally annoying and intrusive as lot of consumers feel today when they are targeted and retargeted with Ads as they browse the internet? Or will it offer consumers more personalized Ad choices to engage with that they are or may really be interested in? Will it reduce fraud thats pervasive in the advertising ecosystem today?

Two leading initiatives to adapt to this change are the Unified 2.0 initiative by The Trade Desk and Google's Privacy Sandbox solution. Whether these solutions prevail over the other or coexist will become clear as they go into full effect this year. One thing is clear though. Power is now in the hands of consumers and it is their reaction and adoption that will determine the future of retargeted advertising.

So, what are these proposals that aim to address the situation with upcoming demise of 3P cookies? Unified 2.0 from Trade Desk intends to flow hashed email id from consenting consumers to the platforms to decrypt and target those users. A UID operator will ensure that these hashed email identifiers are rotated and not permanent. Use of email, although not for permanent identity resolution like 3P cookies, may also run into privacy related issues, as it offers deep insights about the consumers through identity graphs built using offline data. Google’s Privacy Sandbox , on the other hand, intends to aggregate consumers browsing and buying behavior on their Chrome and Android devices and offer APIs to media selling and buying platforms to get aggregated insights and target consumers, not individually based on persona but through cohorts. Does this give ultimate power to Google? Possible yes, but it does seem to provide consumers more protection in terms of how their data is collected, used and monetized.

Two other technologies that are likely to gain momentum are contextual advertising and use of first party cookies by publishers.

Contextual advertising means analyzing content and keywords associated with web pages consumers are on and targeting ads. It would still be possible to target let’s say “all people reading about weight loss in New York City” and target offers to them in a hope they engage. First party cookies are here to stay and any attempts to take it away will impact applications worldwide. First party or 1P cookies are cookies created by the website and application owners and are not accessible to any third party platforms. Assuming publishers can build trust with their consumers and get their consent for specific personalized offers, 1P cookies could also become a viable option as 3P cookies die away soon.

We, at Audiencelogy, are helping our customers adapt to this change. We value your feedback and thoughts as we work through this change in 2023.