Cookie Revolution: How the web changes with the disappearance of third parties

Diverse solutions and new perspectives open up for online marketers following the decision to retire third-party cookies. Let’s try to understand together, then, how online marketing will change.

The path started a few months ago by Safari and Mozilla Firefox browsers is ready to be followed, at the beginning of 2023, by Google as well. In a few weeks, in fact, Chrome will block third-party cookies, with the aim of both increasing user privacy and strengthening its position within the large advertising market.

This is because Google will continue to get its hands on a large amount of information, effectively limiting the collection of publishers. As Google owns and operates numerous services and platforms on the internet, they possess a vast pool of user data that enables them to target ads effectively. Consequently, the phasing out of third-party cookies might not impact Google as much as it would other advertisers and publishers, who rely more heavily on these cookies to gather user data for ad targeting purposes.

But this is not the only significant change underway in online marketing: many communication and user profiling perspectives will change. But before delving into this environment, let’s try to understand one thing: what are third-party cookies and what are they used for?

These are cookies that are stored in a domain different from the one visited at that precise moment by the user and are used to track the habits of internet users and display tailored ads on websites. Eliminating them will entail a global reorganisation of marketing, with experts having to find different solutions, such as zero-party or first-party cookies. The latter are those directly linked by the server of the site being visited, and are closed cookies, meaning they do not provide external information usable for advertising. Zero-party cookies, on the other hand, are the data left more or less voluntarily by the user, for example, through surveys or online forms. A similar approach is used by gambling brands, which provide welcome and no-deposit bonuses based on data analysis of predefined groups of registered users on their platforms. Thanks to reading and understanding these clusters, the offers are continuously updated, as you can see on this Italian website, analysing competitor proposals and aligning with the players’ desires.

In the face of this great web revolution, in short, four solutions open up to marketing managers. The first is explicit consent, necessary for third-party cookies but not mandatory for others; the second is “privacy by default”, which automatically enables first-party cookies. Other paths include informative banners that allow users to choose whether to enable or disable cookies, and finally, some technical solutions such as anonymised cookies.

The web, in short, is forced to change its skin, updating its rules and, above all, keeping its strategies up to date. This is also stated from the majority of CMOs, convinced of the need for continuous and constant innovation. To improve their marketing techniques and continue to conquer the scene.