Big news out of the Google Sandbox today with their announcement to delay Chrome’s cookie-blocking privacy plan until late 2023. Chromes Privacy Engineering Director, Vinay Goel wrote in his early morning blog post that “While there’s considerable progress with this initiative it’s become clear that more time is needed across the ecosystem to get this right”. He went on to explain that if cookies are phased out too quickly it could end up jeopardizing the business models of many web publishers. 

So far, the Sandbox has received over 30 proposals to replace third party cookies and their revised timeline outlines that they plan to have an alternative ready to go by late 2022. At this point Chrome would phase out third-party cookies over a three-month period starting in mid-2023 and ending in late 2023.

The process would take place in two distinct phases:

• Stage 1 (Starting late-2022): Once testing is complete and APIs are launched in Chrome, the start of stage 1 will be announced. During stage 1, publishers and the advertising industry will have time to migrate their services. This stage is expected to last for nine months, and adoption and feedback will be monitored carefully before moving to stage 2.

• Stage 2 (Starting mid-2023): Chrome will phase out support for third-party cookies over a three-month period finishing in late 2023.

While we can almost hear the industry’s collective sigh of relief because of this delay, we would advise our members not to use this gift of time to sit back, but instead to take a breath and begin to navigate the future of addressability calmly and strategically. We need to work together to share insights, build our toolkits and devise smart and resilient strategies for the future – a future that is better for consumers and advertisers. To join the conversation, we invite you to become a part of our Project Rearc working group by reaching out to committees@iabcanada.com.