The tech giant that cried wolf and the role of MMM

Grace Kite and Charles Cleasby

The removal of third-party cookies means that algorithms determining ad placements will be unable to see which ads customers have seen online, and tracking will be limited to the journey from the final ad viewed to the point of sale.

You’d be forgiven if you thought it would never happen. Google announced they were going to bin third-party cookies without following through so many times, that by 2023, more than half of marketers had stopped believing it.

But now the wolf has actually reared its ugly head. 1% of Google Chrome users – about 30 million people – are already without third-party cookies. The roll-out to everyone else is in Q3 and Q4 of 2024.

It means that algorithms that decide on ad placements won’t be able to see which ads customers have seen online. Whether it's multi-touch...

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