Saying Goodbye to Third-Party Cookies in 2024

The last few months of 2023 brought a big change to the digital marketing world —the end of third-party cookies (also known as tracking codes or tracking pixels). Digital marketing experts have been anticipating this restriction for quite some time now. In fact, Europe has been placing restrictions on third-party cookies since May 2018 through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Through GDPR, websites must inform users that a third-party cookie is placed on their website, and provide each user the choice to accept or reject the use of third-party tracking. This is usually done through a pop-up banner when you first enter a website. Even though GDPR only applies to most European countries, many websites that receive global traffic have implemented this feature even when not legally required. At the end of 2023, the most popular website browsers, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple’s Safari, have placed restrictions on third-party cookie tracking globally, and soon will end support entirely; even though the United States and many other countries outside of Europe have yet to formally put any legal restrictions into place.

What Are Third-Party Cookies?

Website cookies are storage mechanisms built in web browsers used to monitor user behavior and store its data. There are two types of cookies: first-party and third-party cookies. First-party cookies are created by the domain the user is currently visiting. Third-party cookies are created by domains other than the one the user is visiting. Third-party cookies are created with the intention of monitoring user behavior across the entire browser activity to gather data on their interests, needs and demographics. This data helps advertisers better serve programmatic digital advertisements to relevant audiences who are more likely to convert into customers.

Why Are Third-Party Cookies Being Restricted?

Not only are companies collecting user data for their own marketing, but they can also profit from selling this data to others. Therefore, web users across the world are demanding more privacy and transparency regarding their choices and control over how their data is being processed, used and sold. As a result, governments around the world are introducing new privacy laws to help protect user privacy and secure their personal digital data. Major web browsers are also listening to their loyal customers and have implemented restrictions to prevent third-party cookies from being created altogether.

How Are Browsers Restricting Third-Party Cookies?

In the big tech landscape, Apple has been leading the charge in protecting user privacy and data since 2015 by creating groundbreaking content blocker features and tracking prevention policies. Joining Apple, Mozilla Firefox also installed the same content blocker features and tracking prevention policies that limit the lifespan of cookie data storage, and introduce transparency logs for users to check exactly which cookies are actively tracking them. Even the mega-giant Google corporation is joining in this user privacy movement and is expected to shut down support of third-party cookie tracking in 2024.

What Does This Mean For Digital Advertising?

Google’s decision to shut down support of third-party cookie tracking in 2024 is huge and will change the digital advertising landscape — particularly for remarketing. First, this will mean a much heavier reliance on first-party cookie tracking as well as other innovative methods of marketing. Remarketing will become much more difficult without collecting your own first-party data. Marketers should focus on collecting everything they can about the users who are actively using your website by creating intricate first-party cookies. Since Google and Meta primarily use first-party cookies to adjust their algorithm to each user, Google Search Ads and Meta Ads will still remain effective within their own platforms. The biggest threat to marketing is the loss of the whole consumer journey start to finish. We will see how they start in Google search and how they behave on our own websites, but we will not see the in between — drop-off points, other competitors they are browsing, and other interest-based data. Without interest-based data, it can become increasingly more difficult to grow a digital audience, or serve ads to the most relevant web users. 

Many marketing professionals have seen this decision coming for years and started switching up their tactics. This is why in recent years we’ve all seen influencer, event marketing and even direct mail dominate marketing strategies once again. Ultimately, this shift in marketing opens up new creative opportunities to mix traditional and digital marketing.