Looks like 3rd party cookies are on their way out

For years, digital marketing has been relying on 3rd-party cookies to analyse user behaviours. Still, amidst the growing general awareness of data commercialisation, legislative oversight, the quest to regain control over one’s privacy and the heavy use of AI instead of traditional browsers, there is a growing need to review their use; to explore new ways to reach, engage and measure their audiences.

At their core level, cookies are light and small text files used by websites to improve the user
experience. Personalization of the website you visit as the memory of your last visits survived,
quicker sign-in thanks to SSO login (single sign on), targeted advertisement all are made possible thanks to cookies dropped on your browser cache during each session you start while visiting a website. The cookies dropped on you can be either from the website you are visiting, which we call first-party cookies; or from another website offering additional services to the one you are visiting; in that case, they are called third-party cookies.

1st-party cookies are generated and controlled by the website domain you are visiting. They are nused to keep users logged in but also to log them out automatically, to surprise you with an intact list of products you added to your cart on your last visit, or to keep website settings you have indicated, such as the language or the currency you prefer to use.
Those first-party cookies are overall harmless as they are controlled by the host domain you visit and deemed by the industry essential for a better user experience.

3rd-party cookies, for their part, are a bit more tricky when it comes to their use. They are generated and dropped on your browser by external domains such as data analytics providers, social media widgets, or ad networks. They are used to follow users well beyond the original website they visited. Those trackers allow 3rd-party companies to capture data regarding user behaviors following them from one website to another, often without their consent. The profiles built by those companies can be so detailed that they have drawn the attention of privacy advocates who raised the alarm, highlighting the mercantilist nature of the data aggregation and the danger that such information can represent for vulnerable people and for the general public.

The issue is well known, and it’s worth highlighting that a few major browsers such as Safari and Firefox have already stopped allowing them, respectively in 2017 and 2019. On the other hand, Google, the biggest of all with more than 80% of the market share for internet searches, was planning to follow suit until 2024 when they announced rolling back their plan and leaving users the option of opting out.

Alternatives to 3rd-party cookies:

• Leveraging the use of in-house data with first-party cookies: Companies can natively collect and analyse important quantity of data that their users share legally with them via their use of the website. From newsletters, buying habits, loyalty programs, to customer surveys, many sources can be employed to better answer customer needs.

• Contextual targeting: It allows advertisers to understand the subject of the content being read and to deliver ads based on this information instead of using user information.

• Data clean room: Those are highly secured environment where company can exchange datasets without sharing personal information.

As awareness about one’s right to privacy on the internet keeps growing, digital ecosystem’s actors will have to move away from the intrusive 3rd party cookies to collect and use data for which they would have obtained user consent.
A new legal framework around data privacy and public awareness will keep pushing online actors to keep experimenting with technology to replace 3rd party-cookies, coming years may well be interesting as to what combination of data and data sources proves to be the most successful to retain campaign performance while respecting user privacy.

Article written by Anaëlle GREEN