The real reason cookie deprecation ‘isn’t a thing’ anymore

This is the last time you will ever see me write about cookie deprecation. Simply put, there is no such thing anymore. Cookies are here to stay.

Last year, Google announced it was no longer going to deprecate third-party cookies, but instead would let the industry know when it would enable users to block cookies. The fact is, you can do that now, and you’ve been able to do that for some time.

Google doesn’t really need to call attention to this functionality to be in compliance with GDPR and other privacy initiatives, and the government has zero interest in pursuing this issue anymore. They are busy with a whole host of other initiatives.

Google held the keys to the car for cookies for the last five years or so, and it never did away with them.  Now it can proclaim its efforts were all in honour of consumer privacy without any additional impact on its advertising business.

Next wave is AI-based

Most day-to-day users of Chrome have their settings the way they want them, and I don’t expect much change there. For all the conversation around ad blockers, that landscape is rather stagnant and probably reached a plateau.

I would also argue that the next wave of digital media has little to nothing to do with cookies, and Google understands this. The first wave of the web was browser-based. The second wave was app-based, as more traffic shifted to mobile amid the desire for companies to create one-to-one relationships with their customers.

This next wave is AI-based and video-focused, and cookies are not as important going forward as context and content. This next wave of digital media circles around two functional UI changes.

First, search and website traffic will be upended and replaced with generative search results and video.

AI will do it

The former means AI will scrape, digest and synthesise data to respond to queries rather than sending users to sites to do the work on their own. The latter relates to the dramatic increase in overall traffic that is simply dedicated to video.

I saw a report recently from Cisco that predicts 80% or more of total web traffic will be video-based in the next couple of years. That is a huge number that stresses the fact that traffic will be AI scouring the web and users watching video. In neither case are cookies really that necessary.

This UI shift in digital means display ads are less valuable. The way brands will engage is through video, and through feeding AI the information that is most relevant. 

Consumers will engage in writing or voice with AI, and then they will watch video content across all the channels, and the owners of these platforms will continue to have the data that was previously based on cookie collection.

A sea change

This will represent another sea change in the category — with a further tilt toward the companies that own the platforms themselves.

Did Google plan all of this? Probably not. 

Its strategists may have read the tea leaves and predicted this change was on the horizon. They played a long game that allowed them to remain at the centre of the conversation — a brilliant strategy, in my eyes.

Did they use this to their advantage? Of course. Wouldn’t you? You can’t blame them. If any one of us were in their position, we’d likely have done the same thing. Don’t you agree?