Google has reneged on its plans to totally abandon third-party cookies from Chrome, opting instead to introduce beefed up consumer controls within the browser. Our CEO Damon Reeve responds to the announcement with Ozone’s point of view.
Google’s announcement to provide users of Chrome with informed choices and controls over how their data is used highlights the complexity of the Privacy Sandbox solution. Like GDPR and Apple ATT before, yesterday’s messaging firmly places consumer interests at its core, carrying a different tone to Privacy Sandbox where Google attempted to weave consumer interests and advertising interests into one solution.
At the heart of all of these initiatives – including third-party cookie deprecation in Chrome – has been the consumer, and their right to a more premium online experience without creepy ad tracking and bombardment of messages often associated with third-party tracking.
Although we don’t yet know the scope of Google’s changes to user settings, it’s likely they will affect the addressability of audiences in Chrome. While this will impact the media buying strategies of brands and agencies, addressability is a bigger topic for publishers and ad tech intermediaries. Whether Chrome will follow a similar approach to Apple’s ATT – and a similar loss of signal and addressability – is unclear. However, these challenges are not new concepts for publishers and ad tech to deal with and solutions will be found. Privacy Sandbox will likely remain as a targeting framework for Chrome – it just won’t be the single solution to address privacy concerns that Google offers.
From an Ozone perspective, we are confident in our ability to deliver greater addressability across the Premium Web – irrespective of whether third-party cookies are deprecated.
The recently published results of the Premium Web Methodology – an audit of Ozone’s operations by PwC – clarifies and validates our approach to delivering addressable media well into the future, whether that means audience for brands, or revenue to publishers.
We remain as committed as ever to championing an ecosystem driven by first-party data, one that puts the needs of publishers and brands at its core, with the upside of a better experience for all consumers.
