Google has recently announced major changes to its timeline for the retirement of third-party cookies and the rollout of its Privacy Sandbox initiative.

On Thursday, June 24th, Google announced the move, which pushes out the launch of Privacy Sandbox by nearly two years. This move is meant to provide more time to the team developing the new features to test and perfect the product before launch.

Per Google, the Privacy Sandbox initiative is being built to create web technologies that protect privacy online while still giving brands and developers what they need to advertise their businesses successfully across the web. The initiative involves both building the technology needed to make this happen and producing a set of open standards that guide the use of personal data in such a way as to maintain privacy for individuals.

What is the New Timeline?

In Google’s announcement about the changed timelines for the initiative, they outlined two major phases for the updated milestones:

  • Stage 1, which starts in late 2022, is meant to ensure that testing is fully completed, and APIs work in Chrome browsers. This stage gives publishers and advertisers the time they need to migrate services to new solutions.
  • Stage 2, which is expected to start in mid 2023, will see Chrome begin to phase out support for third-party cookies.

How Does this Change the Landscape for Publishers and Advertisers?

This is great news for both publishers and advertisers as all parties navigate towards a world without cookies. The move gives both publishers advertisers more time to build sustainable solutions that don't rely on third party cookies.

The extra time the industry has been given will allow for advances in technology over the next two years that will make the change in 2023 much less disruptive.

However, keep in mind that this doesn't mean you can fall asleep at the wheel. Ultimately, this doesn’t change the end-state goal for either publishers or advertisers. While there may be a change to the timelines for the Privacy Sandbox initiative, it is still coming.

As such, both publishers and advertisers should keep their foot on the gas with whatever changes they may already have in progress to protect their results (be it revenue or advertising ROI). Any initiatives you have started should still proceed as planned.

For instance, at Playwire, we’ve been focused on building solutions that don’t rely on third party cookies to serve both our publisher and advertising partners. We’ve heavily invested in building a wealth of first party data so that the loss of third party data doesn’t cause massive waves or changes in the way we serve our partners.

In addition, we are working diligently on testing any and all solutions on the nearly 30% of traffic we already support on which is already “cookie-less.”

Looking for Cookie-Less Solutions?

If you are currently on the hunt for solutions that will support your continued growth as either a publisher or an advertiser once third party cookies cease to exist as we know them, investigating partners that have a significant amount of first party data will be key.

And, while you might have more time to vet and implement these solutions, the last thing you should do is slow down in your search.

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