Google Overhauls Cookie Replacement Plan After Privacy Critiques May 6, 2022 Digital Marketing Business Environment Ecommerce Ecommerce Technology The push for user privacy and the challenges for advertisers Google wins…advertisers lose. The Wall Street Journal article, “Google Overhauls Cookie Replacement Plan After Privacy Critiques” covers Google’s new proposals to limit the type and amount of user information that will be shared with advertisers. Advertisers are pushing back in response to Google rolling out a Cookie replacement plan. This plan would place users in ‘cohorts’ that would place a group of people with similar interests for advertisers to target. Google’s Chrome browser will implement a shortlist of interests based on that user’s recent browsing activity. Our question is still… How recent is “recent browsing activity”? Google’s plan specifies that “Chrome browsers will boil down their internet browsing history over the prior three weeks into five interests a week. This will categorize users into roughly 350 broad topics like “auto & vehicles” or “rock music.” The browser will then share up to three of those interests at a time to participating websites and third parties that had previously seen that browser on that kind of site.” No wonder advertisers are feeling gutted over Google’s privacy proposition! Google is trying to find a middle ground to balance out their approach in the eyes of their precious consumers. Businesses who rely on understanding their customer base fully are looking at these consumer favored changes and seeing a shift toward “healthy cookies” and it’s clearly leaving nothing but stale cookies in the jars for advertisers. Will this rebranded approach to cookies and user data tracking be enough to satiate advertisers? Razoyo President, Paul Byrne, discussed the recent changes to tracking data and analytics with Smart Click’s, Craig Schapiro, at length. These changes to trackable data were expected to a certain degree, the challenge with these changes is that advertisers have a lot less ground to stand on to trace ad ROI, conversions, and consumers AIO’s like they have in the past. Schapiro states that a reduced attribution window PLUS limited access to generalized customer data will have a significant impact on how companies approach their digital ad spend moving forward. Furthermore, we aren’t out of the woods yet, Shapiro predicts even more changes are on the way. Check out the full interview here: New data tracking updates to help user privacy… Is it REALLY more private? The whole concept behind these changes is to give users more control over what information they choose to share with advertisers and data hoarding companies. Users will be able to see and delete interests the browser assigns to them, or turn off the system entirely. However, advertisers critiqued these oncoming changes heavily citing this new method is less effective than using cookies to track user browsing history to determine interest. Some publishers' decisions to evolve with the user privacy movements may hurt the broader online-advertising ecosystem, while leaving Google’s in house ad business relatively unscathed. Google claims these changes will make it more difficult for third parties to access sensitive personal information such as personal characteristics, race or sexual orientation. A win for consumers, a big hit for advertisers. Craig believes there’s still potentially more user restriction tracking to come in the future! As of now, you may see these changes and more start to take shape over the course of the next calendar year. With changes to data privacy tracking, are you utilizing your online services in the best way possible? Razoyo can help integrate your systems for a seamless transition, so your systems are prepared and secured no matter what changes come our way. Lock in a free consultation TODAY! Google has Advertisers up in arms about their next move for data tracking, but you can expect to see some big changes when it comes to tracking your moves online. However, we know there’s a long way to go when it comes to YOUR data privacy. Are you ready for the ride?