The Demise of the Cookie is Postponed Again

The initiative to remove third-party cookies on Chrome has not gone smoothly. Google announced its plan to replace third-party cookies with FLoC in January 2020. FLoC was another name for third-party cookies, and consumers and advertisers quickly learned that this wasn't anything new. The replacement for cookies was heavily criticized for its potential to generate or infer sensitive attributions through users' online behavior and interests.

Fast forward to January 2022, and Google returned to the drawing board. The company announced the scrapping of FLoC and introduced Topics within the same week. Topics are one element of Google's broader Privacy Sandbox plan to crumble third-party cookies in Chrome to improve user privacy.

The new initiative received a lukewarm welcome from the ad tech industry, privacy experts, and consumers. Chris Porter, co-CTO at El Toro IP Targeting, said, "Google is simply rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic with their 'Topics' solution."

Is the Third Time the Charm?

Google recently announced that it would pause its plan to eliminate third-party cookies until mid-2024. The search giant said it needs more testing time to protect users' online privacy.

The indecisiveness on privacy from a multinational technology company is thought-provoking. Google's competitors—Safari, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Brave—have restricted cookies for several years. What's stopping the tech giant from doing the same? Google accounts for 28.6% of the total 2021 digital advertising revenue in the U.S, and being the country's most prominent digital ad publisher could be the reason.

The Ride is Over.

There's no need to stress. Let the search giant scramble to find a digital cookie-free solution. El Toro has been living in the cookieless world since 2013. As the leader in IP Targeting, we use more effective, cookieless targeting to reach your audience. Our analytics are based on actual human behavior in real-time, not topics of interest gathered from a user's week-old browsing history. We match mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) to a physical address through the device's IP address. This provides extreme precision and allows us to bypass cookie-based fraud to serve ads directly to the devices in a household within 24 hours. Can Google do that? (mic drop).

When using GA4, you can benefit from the event-based tracking system that enables more granular data collection and analysis without relying on cookies. Combine El Toro's cookieless targeting with GA4's advanced analytics, and you'll gain powerful insights into your audience while respecting their privacy.

Contact El Toro today to ensure the right people see your ads at the right time without using cookies.