Is your marketing strategy ready for the transition to a cookieless world?

Shift towards a privacy-centric landscape

Third-party cookies are essential for advertisers as they enable a personalised experience, precise targeting and measurable campaign performance. However, rising consumer awareness about privacy and increasing regulatory scrutiny have reshaped the rules of digital engagement, driving a shift towards a more privacy-centric landscape.

Google’s back-and-forth decisions regarding the phase-out of third-party cookies in its Chrome browser exemplify the complexities of this transition. Initially set for 2022, Google delayed this move several times and, in late January 2025, announced a “one-time global prompt” asking Chrome users whether they want to be tracked. Meanwhile, competitors like Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox are already blocking third-party cookies by default, signalling the urgency for all stakeholders to adapt.

Understanding the pros and cons of cookies

To navigate the transition away from third-party cookies effectively, it’s essential to understand both the benefits and challenges they pose.

Benefits for both businesses and consumers:

• Precise targeting allows for personalised ads tailored to individual preferences and behaviour.
• Customisation drives higher engagement rates and improves campaigns’ ROI.
• Powerful analytical capabilities allow to measure campaign performance, attribute conversions and optimise strategies in real-time.
• For consumers, it reduces the digital clutter by enhancing the browsing experience, offering relevant information aligned with personal needs.

Challenges:

• Invasive tracking of users across multiple websites, often without explicit and informed consent or adequate transparency.
• Detailed profiling of individuals, raising privacy risks and fuelling distrust.

Growing privacy awareness leads to regulation

High-profile data breaches and scandals have caused many users to question how their personal information is collected, stored, and used. Tools such as cookie banners and consent mechanisms have become ubiquitous, yet their effectiveness remains controversial. This growing scepticism has led to a consumer demand for greater transparency and control over their data. Governments worldwide have responded with comprehensive privacy laws designed to empower users and hold businesses accountable for their data practices. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), implemented in 2018, set the bar for data privacy, requiring explicit consent for data processing and imposing stringent penalties for non-compliance. Its influence has extended beyond Europe, inspiring similar regulations such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the United States, Brazil’s LGPD, and Canada’s CPPA.

Economic and strategic implications go beyond compliance

As these regulations evolve, so do the economic and operational realities of the digital marketing ecosystem. For example, GDPR has been linked to a 13.3% decline in e-commerce revenue from EU users and an 11.7% reduction in page views for affected websites. Smaller firms are disproportionately affected as they often lack the resources to pivot towards alternative solutions. The restrictions have also increased market consolidation, as larger firms with substantial first-party data reserves, such as Google or Meta, are better positioned to adapt. This raises concerns about fairness and competition within the digital advertising ecosystem.

Alternative solutions balance user privacy and marketing functionality

The transition away from third-party cookies is not just a technological challenge, but a fundamental shift that compels marketers to rethink their data strategies and embrace innovation. As privacy takes centre stage, various alternative solutions are emerging, offering businesses new ways to engage customers while respecting their privacy.

• Google’s Privacy Sandbox introduces new tools to replace individual tracking with privacy-preserving technologies. The Topics API groups users into interest-based cohorts, enabling advertisers to target audiences without identifying individuals. Similarly, the Protected Audience API facilitates interest-based advertising while ensuring user anonymity. However, their effectiveness depends on widespread industry adoption and collaboration, highlighting the need for collective efforts to standardise and refine these technologies.
• First-party data is data collected directly from customers through interactions on owned platforms. Investing in systems to gather and analyse first-party data – such as CRM platforms and loyalty programmes – allows businesses to deliver personalised experiences while offering transparency and building trust. First-party data also positions businesses to adapt more effectively to future changes, by fostering direct connections with their consumers.
• Advanced privacy-preserving technologies can enable privacy-compliant marketing. Differential privacy, for example, ensures that individual user data is anonymised and protected throughout analysis. Solutions like “Cookie Monster,” an on-device data processing system, provide advertisers with insights while safeguarding user information. Contextual advertising is another promising alternative which analyses the content of a webpage rather than tracking individual users, delivering relevant ads without infringing on privacy. Advances in AI and natural language processing have made this approach more precise and scalable, offering a viable replacement for behaviour-based tracking.