Adform prepares for a bright future without thirdparty cookies

It is high time for advertisers to start migration to first-party IDs

Google’s announcement that it would delay cookie deprecation on Chrome until mid-2023 was welcome news to the industry, as it provided more time to further develop cookie-less solutions. The unspoken truth, however, is that third-party cookies are already barely alive.

In addition, automated deletion means that cookies, on average, live for only about a week. Such limited availability and lifespan severely affect advertising activities such as audience segmentation, targeting, storytelling and analytics. Consequently, only half of your potential customer base are addressable via third-party cookies, and only within a limited time span. Adform’s in-depth analysis of third-party cookie dependency on common advertising platforms reveals a high dependency on cookies, with the unfortunate consequence that a huge gap exists – regardless of the Google Chrome deprecation delay.

First-party solution deployment with global and regional publishers has had surprisingly rapid traction during 2020 and 2021, and first-party IDs and audiences now exist at the same scale as third-party cookies in most markets and on a few platforms.

Adform has been an early pioneer and now trades more media spend based on first-party IDs and data than on third-party cookies.

The rapid adoption of first-party IDs and data capabilities by publishers throughout 2020 and 2021 has again given marketers the possibility of targeting, optimisation, and measurement on Safari and Firefox, two browsers that have long since deprecated third-party cookies. Not only does this increase performance back to the levels of cookie-based environments, but it also provides even higher return on ad spend (ROAS). This can be expected to continue for

With these two browsers having a global mobile market share of 30-50 per cent, this represents a significant ROAS improvement opportunity for most marketers. While the low-hanging fruit of ROAS improvements justifies swift action, the strategic value in building independence from third-party cookies, and the gatekeepers of these such as Google, should not be forgotten.

The transition from third-party cookies from adtech and mar-tech intermediaries to first-party IDs, directly owned by the brands and publishers which customers trust, leads to an improved ecosystem on several fronts since it entails greater transparency, which can help to reduce fraud.