Identity vs. Privacy: Digital Advertising in a Cookieless World

Signal loss is having a significant impact on digital advertising, with third-party cookie deprecation, frequency capping, and attribution concerns as regulatory bodies, browser developers, operating system owners, and consumers increase their focus on user data.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) estimates that signal loss stemming from existing third-party cookie deprecation in Safari and Firefox and Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) has already curbed advertisers’ ability to target and track 50-60% of internet users. 

But the biggest hammer is about to drop, as Google intends to deprecate third-party cookies in its wildly popular Chrome browser by the end of 2024, ushering in a new age of cookieless advertising where alternative identity solutions are critical to digital advertising success.

On the brink of this type of transformational moment, how is the advertising industry preparing (or not preparing) for increased signal loss and a cookieless world? What do industry professionals they think of the leading alternative identity solutions? And how do marketers and advertisers feel about privacy and its place in the larger identity conversation?

A Window into the Cookieless Future of Targeting, Attribution, and Measurement in Digital Advertising

For this report, Basis surveyed over 200 marketing and advertising professionals from top agencies, brands, non-profits, and publishers to see how they are reacting to third-party cookie deprecation and signal loss, and to gauge their feelings about privacy and user data as we head into a pivotal year for the advertising industry.

Findings include: 

• 49% of marketers and advertisers do not feel their organization is prepared to succeed in a cookieless world.
• More than one-third of marketers and advertisers (33.8%) say they do not believe they will be able to confidently reach target audiences if Google follows through on its plans to deprecate third-party cookies from Chrome in 2024.
• Over 90% of marketers and advertisers feel it is important to their organization to implement new identity solutions within the next six months, with 57.8% calling that need “extremely important”.
• 91.7% of industry professionals believe the current slate of cookieless identity solutions fail to fully resolve consumer and regulatory concerns around privacy concerns.
• 59.3% of marketers and advertisers say they would like to see federal-level regulation of data privacy in the US.

Want to see how marketers and advertisers are navigating third-party cookie deprecation, signal loss, and data privacy as they shape the future of digital advertising—and learn how industry professionals feel about what’s to come? Download the full report today.