Google will keep cookies and skip opt-out option in Chrome—what it means for advertising and Privacy Sandbox

Google is keeping cookies in their current form, marking a complete reversal of its more than five-year plan to phase out the internet trackers that have come to symbolize privacy invasion in the advertising economy. On Tuesday, Google announced it will no longer roll out a “user choice” button in Chrome this year—a feature that would have let users opt out of being tracked by third-party advertisers. Instead, it’s keeping cookies as they are. “We’ve made the decision to maintain our current approach to offering users third-party cookie choice in Chrome,” said Anthony Chavez, Google’s VP of Privacy Sandbox, “and will not be rolling out a new standalone prompt for third-party cookies.” Google had said it would roll out the anti-cookie prompt this year, after many setbacks in its pursuit to reinvent digital advertising without the trackers. The ad tech community and publishers expected that directly asking users to accept or reject cookies would lead most to decline, posing major ramifications for the industry. More on Google The Tuesday announcement is not shocking since Google has postponed its plan to move beyond cookies for years following multiple roadblocks. The technology it developed to serve internet ads without cookies, called Privacy Sandbox, was sometimes faulty, making it difficult for ad tech partners to conduct business, and there have been regulators in Google’s way. In the U.K., the Competition and Markets Authority oversaw Privacy Sandbox to ensure Google didn’t use its considerable power in online advertising to advantage itself over rivals. Meanwhile, the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office had an oversight role ensuring Google was remaking ad tech with privacy. The twin goals of fostering commerce and preserving privacy were often at odds, and Google promised not to change a thing without the regulators’ approval. In the U.S., Google has been deemed a monopoly in two separate cases over the last year, including last week when a federal judge said it illegally monopolized advertising tech markets. In the other from the summer, Google was said to hold a monopoly in search, and one of the remedies the U.S. Department of Justice is seeking is for Google to divest of Chrome, its web browser. That’s because Chrome’s 60%-plus market share gives Google an easy way to point consumers to its search engine on the web. Since 2019, Google has been developing Privacy Sandbox, a way to run internet ad auctions without divulging personal information of users. Keeping cookies means that the new ad tech won’t be as necessary, and that comes after tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars went into developing Privacy Sandbox, according to advertising leaders who worked on the project and have spoken with Ad Age on condition of anonymity. Google had given grants to ad tech partners to build Privacy Sandbox to prepare for the death of cookies, and that was one of Google’s ways of showing it would work with companies affected by its changes. In its announcement, Google said it would continue to develop parts of Privacy Sandbox, but it is a complex design of application programming interfaces, and the company did not have a roadmap ready for what parts of that ecosystem it would support. “As we’ve engaged with the ecosystem, including publishers, developers, regulators, and the ads industry, it remains clear that there are divergent perspectives on making changes that could impact the availability of third-party cookies,” Chavez said in the announcement. Data-driven Marketing Playbook: Join industry leaders on May 22 to explore how data can drive marketing strategies, optimize media buying and improve customer engagement. Learn more here.

Google will keep cookies and skip opt-out option in Chrome—what it means for advertising and Privacy Sandbox

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