Cutting cookies from digital advertising

In early 2020, Google sent shock waves through the entire digital advertising industry by announcing to eliminate third-party cookies from its Chrome browser. After all, cookie-based technology has been baked into the online marketing ecosystem for over two decades, helping advertisers serve the right ads to the right audience at the right time. So, what will a cookieless future look like? What impact will cookie deprecation have on the various players of the digital advertising realm, and how are they preparing for the change? Marketers, on the one hand, will need to find alternative solutions that promise a high degree of personalization but also comply with consumer privacy and data protection laws. For publishers, implementing pay/registration walls may become a last resort, even though this step would fuel the demise of the open internet. And to consumers, who are labeled as the main beneficiaries of Google’s cookie-cutting move, reclaiming personal data might actually come at unforeseen costs.