After years of staring down the barrel and delayed deadlines, Google Chrome has finally removed support of 3rd Party (3P) cookies for the first 1% of Chrome users which started in early January. In theory, this will allow ad tech companies to begin running tests in a real environment where no 3P cookies are present ahead of the eventual switch-off which is planned to be completed by the end of 2024.

If only it were that simple….

Enter the UK CMA (Competition and Markets Authority). They will police the changes from a Regulatory standpoint to ensure that the changes are not benefiting Google and that some of the proposals by the Chrome team are meaningful alternatives for the industry. The 1% testing runs until mid Q3. The CMA are then planning to make their decision which is also based on feedback from the wider industry.

With that in mind, the earliest that the wider phase out can begin is late Q3, rumoured to be 30th September… would love to read this back in a year and see whether this actually happened as planned!

Cutting through the cookie noise.

Now the introduction waffle is out of the way and I have hopefully set the scene. I want to mention why I am writing this blog series. There has been a huge amount of noise over the last few months (and the years in the lead up) of companies posting about what is to come and the solutions that they are rolling out. But what I haven’t seen a great deal of yet is explaining the reality of the situation.

Therefore we will come at this blog series from two angles:

1. A round-up of what we are seeing in the market, what changes are happening and what we are seeing from testing.

The other thing that is seemingly missing to me that I haven’t seen in the swathes of content that has been released is some commentary from a user’s experience. After all this is what it is all about right…..?

That’s right you guessed it, I have opted in to be part of the first 1% of users that has cookies removed! So you can also expect to see this blog series cover:

2. What it is like to be a 3P cookie free user! What types of ads am I seeing vs what I was seeing before? What is my experience like across the open web vs across Google O&O?

Disclaimer! Encore is a tech agnostic business meaning we have no ties to any one particular cookie alternative being victorious. We will be continuing to test all viable alternatives with no bias to any in particular.