Yesterday, Google’s Chrome team announced that, by 2022, the Chrome browser will stop supporting 3rd party cookies. With this decision, Google is challenging the pillars of digital advertising that brands have embraced massively over the past 20 years, from audience qualification and targeting to frequency capping and performance attribution. Google plans to offer standardised replacement solutions that they define and own, making them available only via Chrome Browser APIs to independent publishers and ad tech vendors. Those who have differentiated themselves with custom profiling, bespoke targeting and attribution, advanced incrementally measurement, or any other intelligent data-driven capabilities will be forced to fall in line with the “Google standard”. Ultimately, this move will undermine independent technology providers, and increase the dominance of the Walled Gardens as monetisation and audience engagement destinations for publishers and brands.

We believe there is a better future for digital advertising. 

Over the past 2.5+ years, ID5 has been preparing for the transition to a privacy-by-design, standardised, publisher-based identification infrastructure. By launching Universal ID in June 2019, we have created a neutral ID stored by publishers that can be shared with all authorised digital advertising stakeholders, creating a common framework to identify users and exchange data in a privacy-compliant manner. As a first-party ID, it is not blocked by browsers today; and because it is strictly based on user consent and publisher preferences, it has no reason to be blocked by browsers in the future. 

Two years in the future is both very long and very short. It gives us plenty of time to manage the transition with each publisher and ad tech vendor, but forces us to start the process as soon as possible to maximise the benefits of the “network effect”. We are ready to have this conversation with you, to test, deploy and scale our services, and build a better user identification infrastructure for digital advertising. We are all in this together, let’s work together towards a successful outcome for our companies, our clients, end consumers, and the digital advertising industry.