For years, third party cookies have been the silent engine of digital marketing. They helped brands track behaviour across the web, segment audiences, and serve relevant ads with remarkable precision.
However, the same mechanism that powered personalised campaigns has also fuelled concerns over privacy and transparency. As regulators and browsers dismantle this system, marketers must learn to adapt, and fast.
With that said, here's Kooba's answers to some of your most pressing third party cookies questions:
Hold on, what even are third party cookies?
In the simplest sense, cookies are pieces of information which visitors of a website agree to share with the owner of that website. This information is stored on a user’s device, allowing them to “remember” their preferences, login details etc. From a marketing perspective, these cookies give valuable insights into who our users are, and how they like to behave.
These cookies come from different places. Those you give to users on your own site are first party cookies, and these are completely in your control. But users can also share cookies they collected on other sites with you. These are third party cookies, and they provide useful information on how your audience has previously behaved outside of your website.
For instance, imagine you run a website which sells sports equipment. When a user arrives with third party cookies from websites related to football, you can then tailor your content and promotions to their interest in this specific sport.
It's no surprise that many marketing teams have made extensive use of this tool. A 2024 study by Adobe found that 49% of marketers relied on third party cookies, down from 75% in 2022. This suggests that attempts to “wean off” of this data have been only partially successful.
Why are third party cookies leaving?
Third-party cookies have long pushed the limits of user privacy. For years, advertisers used them to track people across the web, often without clear consent. With laws like GDPR and CCPA raising the stakes, and users demanding more control, browsers from Safari to Chrome are phasing them out. The goal is to give people transparency and choice in how their data is collected and used.
As Justin Schuh, Director of Chrome Engineering at Google, explained in 2020:
“Users are demanding greater privacy—including transparency, choice and control over how their data is used—and it’s clear the web ecosystem needs to evolve to meet these increasing demands.”
Despite Google recently delaying the complete removal of third-party cookies, this can only be interpreted as a stay of execution. Soon, regulatory and public pressures will confine third party cookies to the dustbin of marketing history.
If third party cookies disappear, how can I track my audience?
Third party cookies have been so important, for so long, that it's easy to forget the alternative solutions that have always existed. From a marketing perspective, the goal of cookies is simply to measure and track the behaviour of your audience, which is still easily accomplished.
The main alternatives include:
- First party cookies, collected directly on your own digital platforms.
- First party data, which can be collected from newsletters, gated content, social media platforms or any other content which your audience engages with.
- Zero party data, which is directly provided by an audience through surveys, reviews and other feedback channels.
You probably already collect this data, but a decline in third party cookies will increase its relative value within your marketing strategy.
As we’ve argued previously, it may be worthwhile taking a strategic shift towards owned channels more broadly, as doing so avoids future data problems.
How are other marketing teams managing the loss of third party cookies?
The good news is that plenty of marketing teams are already adapting. The most obvious shift is towards first-party data, gathering what they can directly from their own channels and making it work harder. Others are revisiting contextual targeting, placing ads based on the content people are looking at in the moment, rather than following them around the web.
It’s not just theory either. CMOs and their teams are already investing more in first-party data collection, and many are testing privacy-friendly tools like clean rooms to measure performance without exposing personal details.
How can AI help manage the loss of third party data?
Where one door closes, another opens.
Whilst marketing teams have lost access to external data sources, advances in AI-powered web design can fill the gap with more contextual internal data. As users interact with your website, they provide a massive range of disorganised behavioral data (also known as deterministic data). LLMs can use this data to categorise users into different predefined personas, and offer them personalised solutions in real time.
To return to the example of a sporting equipment retailer, AI segmentation would allow us to quickly categorise a visitor as a football fan based on where they move their mouse, which pages they click on, and other behavioural data. This could then allow for a targeted approach, without relying on any clues from third party cookies.
What can I do next?
If your data strategy is still addicted to third party cookies, then the first step is admitting that you have a problem.
Joking aside, it is worth reconsidering your data and analytics strategy from first principles. Not only will the ground soon disappear beneath third party data, but the alternatives are more attractive than ever.
If you’d like to discuss a more sustainable and controlled data collection strategy across your digital platforms, get in touch with our specialist team today, we’d love to talk further.
