Digiday+ Research: Publishers anticipate having more time with third-party cookies than marketers

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.