Digiday+ Research: Publishers anticipate having more time with third-party cookies than marketers
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The timeline on which Google will officially kill the third-party cookie is anyone’s guess at this point. According to a Digiday+ Research survey conducted in the second quarter, marketers’ guesses look very different from publishers’.
At this point, marketers are operating under the assumption that Google will end up on the earlier side of their current timeline, according to Digiday’s survey — but not by a huge margin. The highest percentage of brand, retailer and agency pros — just over a third (36%) — said in Q2 that they believe Google will get rid of third-party cookies in the Chrome browser at some point in the first quarter of next year.
Interestingly, the next-highest percentage was among marketers who said they believe cookies will be gone before the end of the year (25% of marketer respondents said this). It’s important to note, though, that some respondents to Digiday’s survey completed it about a week before Google officially announced that they would push back their Q4 2024 deadline for cookie deprecation.
Meanwhile, 24% of marketers said they believe cookies will be gone at some point in Q2 2025 or afterward. And 15% said they think Google will never actually get rid of third-party cookies.
Overall, this doesn’t represent a big shift for marketers, even after Google officially pushed back its cookie deprecation deadline (again), according to Digiday’s survey data. In a Q1 2024 survey, we asked a slightly different question — whether marketers agreed or disagreed that Google would get rid of cookies at different points through next year (or never) — and the largest percentage of marketers agreed in that case as well that cookies will be gone at some point in Q1 2025, but not by a very significant margin. Fifty-six percent of marketers agreed to some degree in Q1 of this year that Google would get rid of cookies in Q1 of next year, while 49% said they agreed cookie deprecation would happen by the end of 2024 and 47% agreed that it would happen at some point in Q2 2025 or beyond.
Digiday’s survey found that it’s a different story on the publisher side of things.
First of all, publishers’ definitive stance is that third-party cookies will be around for at least another year. Nearly two-thirds of publisher pros (63%) said in Q2 that they believe Google will get rid of third-party cookies in the Chrome browser at some point in Q2 2025 or beyond.
The next-highest percentage of publishers trailed way behind at 17%. That 17% applies to both the publishers who believe Google will get rid of third-party cookies in Q1 2025 and those who believe Google will never get rid of third-party cookies. Just 4% said cookies would be gone by the end of the year.
Unlike with their marketer counterparts, this does mark a shift in publishers’ expectations of the cookie deprecation timeline from Digiday’s first-quarter survey. In Q1 2024, the largest percentage of publishers (67%) said they agreed that Google would get rid of third-party cookies in Q1 2025. And not far behind were the publishers who agreed cookie deprecation would be complete by the end of 2024 (61% agreed with this). Meanwhile, not even a third of publishers (31%) said they thought cookie deprecation would bleed into (or beyond) Q2 2025.
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