Teads is Ready for The Cookie Deprecation, With or Without Google

Google’s latest extension of their deprecation timeline has created a news cycle that further compounds the already doom spiral that the industry feels about the death of the 3rd party cookie. However, at Teads, we believe a more pragmatic and rounded approach to cookie deprecation is needed, especially as so almost half of all impressions we see from our publishers are already cookieless. 

First and foremost, it’s fair to say that this time around the delay is different and really isn’t that long. If all goes to plan with the requirements of the CMA and ICO, Google has stated that their timeline has rolled into early 2025. That’s really not that long and therefore this current delay should have minimal impact on the plans and efforts being taken by all industry participants to prepare for the eventual demise of the 3rd party cookie. 

Furthermore, despite the negativity to the news of the latest delay, the Privacy Sandbox is currently compliant with CMA requests, however, the challenges presented by deprecation still need time to be resolved. We’ve seen that quarter over quarter these challenges are being resolved but it’s fair to say, the former timeline just wasn’t quite long enough for the transition to run to completion.   

As a partner of Google and the Privacy Sandbox we are actively participating in the testing of all new solutions and finding opportunities to integrate these new technologies into our existing solution set. So far, we’ve observed that the Privacy Sandbox enables better performance than a full cookieless environment which is promising for an early stage technology.

At Teads, we see the Privacy Sandbox solutions acting as a complement to our existing Data Suite and cookieless solutions and not as a direct substitute for the 3rd party cookie. Since 2018, Teads has led the way with solutions like the cookieless translator, predictive audiences and advanced contextual targeting. 8 out of 10 of every targeting impression sold uses cookieless signals and with or without the Privacy Sandbox, we are helping both our advertisers and publishers take advantage of the fact that so many impressions served to advertisers today are without cookies thanks to Safari and Firefox usage. 

As we progress through 2024, we encourage all of our advertiser and publisher partners to take advantage of this additional time from Google and approach cookie deprecation using three key steps;

1. Audit: If not done so already, identify where you are currently reliant on 3rd party cookies. By knowing where the risk is, you can ascertain where you should test.
2. Test: Test cookieless solutions throughout 2024 to ensure that your risk is managed. From targeting to measurement, it is important to ensure that no disruption to your business is felt when cookies are finally deprecated.
3. Invest: if you are already comfortable with cookieless solutions, invest now. In some markets (for example; the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Australia) cookieless impressions outnumber cookied impressions. Don’t wait to buy into that inventory pool, invest now and scale your campaign performance. 

If you’d like to learn more our cookieless Data Suite and our cookieless readiness program, download the 1-sheet or contact us.