A letter from ID5’s CEO, Mathieu Roche

Yesterday, Google reversed its decision to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome, a move initially announced in February 2020. While this might create a stir in the industry, it shouldn’t alter the course of digital advertising toward a more privacy-safe future.

When we created ID5 in 2017, our ambition was to increase advertising efficiencies and enforce user privacy preferences in the wake of the GDPR regardless of third-party cookies. Even then, we recognized the limitations of third-party cookies: they needed synchronization across thousands of domains, causing significant latency and sustainability issues; they had poor match rates, leading to missed opportunities for brands to reach their target audiences; they posed significant data leakage risks for publishers; they couldn’t ensure legal compliance for consent and data processing; and last but not least, third-party cookies were not supported in Apple’s Safari browser, excluding a significant – affluent – portion of the market. And now Google is asking Chrome users to decide whether they want cookies or not, which will decrease their availability even further.

Third-party cookies remain as unfit for purpose in 2024 as they were in 2017. Now that the Privacy Sandbox distraction is over, we can refocus on what really matters for marketers and media owners: enabling addressable and measurable advertising at scale, across devices and channels, while protecting consumer data. And while doing that, support free access to content and services for people.

Since 2017, we’ve built a business to support efficient, privacy-compliant advertising. Our mission remains the same in 2024 and we are staying true to our commitment to the industry as well as consumers.