Brand, agency execs speak out on Google’s latest cookie-killing plan and cookieless identifier challenges

The header image shows an illustration of a boat in the water with a cookie on the sail.

The third-party cookie’s prolonged demise is kinda agonizing. But with Google announcing recently that it will deprecate the ad industry’s de facto identifier for 1% of Chrome users in the first quarter of 2024, perhaps the end of the road is near.

During the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit, which kicked off on May 22 in Palm Springs, California, brand and agency executives weighed in on the present and future of the third-party cookie and cookieless identifiers, as featured in the video below.

To what extent are advertisers actually weaning themselves off of the third-party cookie? Are alternative identifiers currently equipped to compensate for the cookie’s loss? And, of course — after two previous postponements — will Google really go through with killing off the third-party cookie after all?

“It’s kind of like crying wolf, so to speak. Is this it? Is this real? I think we’re getting much closer to reality when they make that kind of announcement,” HP’s senior director of global marketplace strategy and media execution Morgan Chemij said of Google’s latest announcement.

More in Marketing

Rembrand’s CEO wants to grow virtual ad placements in streaming, and he’s looking elsewhere for models

Omar Tawakol wants to improve advertising within the streaming world, and is working with advertisers and publishers to improve that experience.

Marketers are keen to use generative AI in ad campaigns, but hidden costs lurk

Marketers across the industry want to use AI to cut down on time spent in creative production. It’s not so simple in practice.

2025 was rough for Target. It could also be the year when its turnaround began

Much of the front half of the year for Target was defined by the company’s decision in January to pull back on DEI initiatives.