Allant Group POV: Changes to Third-Party Cookies: The First-Party Revolution is About to Begin

Google Chrome, the most widely used desktop browser, recently announced that it is delaying its plan to phase out third-party cookies until 2023.  This is a full year later than originally planned. Meanwhile, other browsers like Safari and Firefox have already blocked third-party cookie tracking.

More Time for Alternatives

The delay gives publishers and advertisers more time to find suitable alternatives. And, many industry experts believe this will give Google more time to work with regulators to avoid antitrust investigations and privacy concerns. As Google pumps the brakes, Apple continues to implement privacy changes with its opt-in app transparency, email tracking options and its new Privacy Dashboard. These began with IOS14, with plans for expansion with IOS 15. While  all these moves are designed to protect the privacy of consumers, it presents challenges to marketers who rely on media that’s activated on browser-based channels.

An Optimistic View

All of us at the Allant Group are optimistic that the additional time will allow for suitable alternatives to be found: There’s already a drive to establish new transactable IDs—either by the browsers themselves or by entities using first-party relationships and hash-based email identifiers.

The Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0, for example, is one attempt to create a digital ID based on hashed email and browser IDs. The key to its success will be adoption by the Industry, which is still unknown but looks promising.

LiveRamp continues to work on developing a cookie-less ID and building a consortium of users across the digital ecosystem. Known as the Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS), it allows a two-way value exchange between brands and publishers, enabling publisher first party authenticated identity across the open internet, providing addressability without third-party cookies.

As long as Google and top social media platforms refuse to share valuable media insights (walled gardens) with advertisers, none of the new identifiers will solve this issue. Many marketers will likely wait and see how the industry adapts and evolves before choosing one or more of the new solutions.

We expect the large programmatic media activation platforms to work with large data providers and publishers, where Allant and its digital partners would be the go-between for data and activation platforms for large parts of the open advertising ecosystem.

We believe that measurement will turn out to be less challenging in the new landscape because any identifiers collected in real time with an impression, click, or conversion event can be tied to other identifiers for a more accurate representation of media attribution. There will likely be challenges posed within intraday media optimization use cases, but they will probably be handled like the activation use case mentioned above.

Critical Capabilities

In order to traverse the ever-changing and unpredictable Internet browser landscape, the Allant Group works with digital partners who bring four critical capabilities to the table:

1. Experienced R&D Teams
   Our digital and data partners have adapted to major browser technology changes over the years, including Flash Storage, HTML5 Storage, and Apple ITP. Many team members are also associated with W3C and the Google Customer Advisory Board.
2. Adaptive AI Technology
   Machine learning and other AI technologies can understand and adjust to features in browser environments. This enables the creation of persistent statistical IDs, either in real time or through an offline batch process.
3. Integration across the Ecosystem
   The Allant Group and our partners already have direct integrations with publishers that allow the use of cookies in a first-party context, which means they’ll be unaffected by the upcoming changes. Our partners also work with publishers that link email hash data to cookie/statistical identifiers, to the tune of billions of observations per month. This gives us the ability to transcend the use of cookies for browser tracking and use a more persistent identifier like an email hash to do so.
4. Relationship-Based Value Exchange
   The Allant Group and our partners provide data and identity solutions to some of the largest brands and tech companies in the marketing ecosystem. Any approach taken by Google to “whitelist” technology providers in the future is virtually guaranteed to include our digital partners.

More to Come

As things evolve over the next two years, we will be sure to update you with the latest developments. For now, please know that Allant is working hard to ensure that marketers continue to target the right individuals and to help them grow/gain value from their digital advertising.

By Mary Kay Scholtens, SVP Data & Identity Services

To learn more about our data strategies, contact us today.