Google Chrome and 3rd party cookies

Following Google’s announcement about its new privacy sandbox initiative, and the updates around http:// and https://, Google also made the announcement to make 3^rd party cookies obsolete. Following Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox, this comes as no surprise that Chrome, the most commonly used browser in many countries, would soon make an announcement about their plans to end support of the 3^rd party cookies.

What was never clear, was how Google planned to make these changes and how they differed from ITP with Safari and ETP from Firefox. Thanks to the recent update Google has provided clarity on what this means for the web in general, and we can now break down into what this means for TradeTracker and the affiliate channel.

Google is aiming to drop support for 3^rd party cookies within the next two years, so unlike the two other mentioned browsers, this is expected to be done in a phased process rather than fully blocking these cookies by default. Within this time, the tech giant is looking to provide solutions to continue to work in the ad-space in ways that are less invasive than simple 3^rd party cookie tracking.

For many years there has been concern over the ways these cookies track the way a visitor browses the web, and what sort of ads they see. One of the biggest talking points regarding the web right now is all around privacy, transparency and control over how individuals data is used. Many ad-networks and marketing platforms rely on the use of 3^rd party cookies to operate their businesses. By taking the phased approach, Google aims to ease the concerns of these parties by looking into alternatives that can operate in a similar, but less intrusive way than the current system. Whilst it’s not yet clear what these alternatives may be, many can look to this as a positive solution to help work within the new privacy-first web of the future.

What does this all mean for TradeTracker?

At TradeTracker, we’ve been able to position ourselves far in advance to be ahead of these solutions in order for our advertisers and publishers to continue their work in an uninterrupted way through the use of our technology. Thanks to our DirectLinking technology we have been able to work with our advertisers on a 1^st party cookie basis. This enables brands to create and store cookies straight from their own domains rather than relying on in-direct and outside domains to do so (3^rd party cookies). The benefit of this is protection from the initiatives taken to block 3^rd party cookies by default, as well as provide a more accurate and consumer-trustworthy solution to track activity through the affiliate network.

For publishers, we are happy to provide our reassurances that your activity remains uninterrupted. As with ITP and ETP, our technology enables us to continue working on a basis that allows you to track your activity without worry of drops in performance. Whether this be by our DirectLinking technology or our cookieless fallback technology we will continue to be ahead of emerging challenges that aim to disrupt the industry and ultimately the revenues for advertisers and publishers alike.

Regarding the steps being taken by Google, we can confidently assure all parties that TradeTracker is prepared for any changes when they arise. You can read our previous blog to see what activity has been taken around the recent updates released by Google Chrome.

Should you have any further questions or concerns around the 3^rd party cookie update from Chrome, as well as those already undertaken by Safari and Firefox, make sure you contact us for support and further insights into what this will mean for you either as a publisher or an advertiser.