In the world of online advertising, relevance is relative. An advertisement targeting system might not live up to the ideal of delivering exactly the right message to the right person at the right time — but if it’s the best of the available alternatives, then the advertising dollars will follow.
So it is easy to understand the sense of dread felt by many online publishers and ad tech companies as one of the linchpins of the advertising-supported internet — the third-party cookie — heads off into the sunset. Apple was the first to sound the death knell for these identifiers that track users as they move around the web, blocking them in its Safari browser. Google has said its Chrome browser, which accounts for more than half of web traffic, will stop supporting them by early 2022.
That might not matter if it leaves everyone on an equal footing in a more privacy-respecting future. But the warring plans for what will replace cookies — and Google’s ability to shape the future for much of the industry — make that highly unlikely.