Google recently announced they are delaying their plan to disable third-party cookies in Chrome, along with their Privacy Sandbox initiative. It’s tempting to look at this as a reprieve, a little extra time to relax and move post-cookie efforts into low gear, hoping the additional time will be enough to find better solutions. However, it’s important to recognize that nothing has really changed.

The end of third-party cookies is still advancing, and all the reasons for that happening are still valid and very much real. Readers are still concerned about being tracked and having their data leaked into an uncontrolled ad tech marketplace. They still look to publishers to act on their behalf. Buyers also continue to question the efficacy of the current 3p-data-driven marketplace. Regulators still seek to protect user data. Technology is still being transformed by engineering-based privacy efforts, and an increasing number of companies — with Apple leading the charge — are marketing themselves and their products on privacy quality.

For forward-looking publishers, nothing has changed. It still benefits us to act as strongly as possible on behalf of privacy-seeking readership by leaning into privacy. The deadline may have moved, but the future is still an increasingly private one and the market, as ever, favors early adopters.

Until the end of third-party cookies, there are plenty of old technologies we can’t compete without, as well as new ones that seek to build a platform for advertising, free of third-party cookies. Zeus Technology isn’t waiting. We will continue to innovate, test and collaborate with partners in the ad tech ecosystem who bring performance, both in eCPMs and speed on-page, on behalf of our customers. Through Zeus, our publishers will find both the resources to maintain their momentum through the end of 3p’s status quo, and the runway to continue to operate and expand via experimentation in the future of ad tech.


I originally wrote this on behalf of The Washington Post for their Zeus Technology Blog. The original post can be found here.





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