Cookieless advertising with AdUp
All you need to know about the world of advertising without cookies.
Intro: Less cookies, more data protection
Update August 2024: The abolition of third-party cookies has been postponed again and is now not expected until 2025.
The delay is mainly due to regulatory challenges and the complexity of the changeover. Various interest groups had concerns that need to be examined further. The delay is also intended to give media companies more time to adapt to alternative methods of user tracking without third-party cookies.
For more news, we recommend Google's Privacy Sandbox news page.
An overview
The debate around the removal of cookies, particularly third-party cookies, is part of a larger trend towards greater privacy on the internet. Google has announced that it will stop supporting third-party cookies in its Chrome browser from 2023/2024. This is part of an initiative known as the Privacy Sandbox. The Privacy Sandbox is designed to provide alternative technologies that allow advertisers to reach their target audiences without compromising user privacy.
What's behind the initiative?
The first distinction is between first-party and third-party cookies. A first-party cookie is one that can only be created and viewed by the website operator whose site the user is actually visiting. Visits to a website can be tracked in this way. For example, if a user returns to a website after three days, first-party cookies recognise that it is the same user. The main benefit of a first-party cookie is that it makes a website easier to use. Visiting the site becomes more convenient because your preferred settings and login details are automatically applied.
So far, so good. Third-party cookies are more tricky. They are used by ad tech companies to get more information about website users, so that they can ultimately serve data-based ads as accurately as possible. If third-party cookies in your browser are blocked, this data can no longer be easily included, making users less identifiable. The term "cookieless advertising" refers to the use of third-party cookies.
What are cookies used for at AdUp?
Cookies are currently used for retargeting and conversion tracking. Retargeting is a major challenge for all providers of online marketing solutions. Google, for example, is already developing new concepts such as the "Protected Audience API (PAAPI)" to implement retargeting methods in the new, more privacy-conscious browser environment. We at AdUp are monitoring this move to see how efficient the PAAPI turns out to be, even though it will not be a 1:1 replacement for classic retargeting.
The situation with conversion tracking is different. For server-to-server conversion tracking, we have been using an alternative solution without the use of third-party cookies for years.
S2S Conversion Tracking
By introducing an alternative method to classic conversion tracking, we at AdUp have made ourselves independent of third party cookies. The conversion pixel is no longer called from the user's browser, but directly from the advertiser's server. This not only means that no cookies are required, but also that conversions can be tracked even more reliably as the pixels cannot be suppressed by the browser. The use of server-to-server conversion tracking therefore already delivers better results than classic cookie-based conversion tracking and is therefore recommended as a precise basis for optimising campaigns.
Are you already an AdUp advertiser and still using classic conversion tracking? Then take a look at our support area or contact us to find out everything you need to know about implementing S2S tracking!
What's next?
The Google Privacy Sandbox will publish two different reports, providing information on different data about users and conversions. There will be some challenges due to the increased privacy requirements. We are currently exploring the possibilities of this new type of conversion attribution, drawing on our long history of handling conversion data and turning it into valuable performance metrics for our advertisers.
In addition, the IAB Tech Lab is currently conducting various analyses on the effectiveness of the new browser alternatives. The aim is to show, for example, the difference between the old solutions and the new Protected Audience API solution. Reliable results are not yet available across the board.
If you want to find out more, we recommend the Google pages: https://privacysandbox.com/intl/de_de/
