Third-party cookie deprecation - statistics & facts

In January 2020, Google announced that starting in 2022, its browser Chrome would no longer accept third-party marketing cookies. The move was later postponed to the first quarter of 2024, when Google wants to eliminate cookies for one percent of Chrome users. This will be followed by a full phase-out in the second half of the same year. Cookies collect demographic information about internet users, such as age, gender, product preference, and information on previous searches. Such data is then used to target consumers with digital ads tailored to their cookie profile. Chrome is not the first browser to take a stand against third-party cookies. Mozilla’s Firefox started work on limiting the power of cookies back in 2013, and Apple’s browser Safari began preventing user tracking by limiting cookie use in 2017. However, Chrome’s move will have the farthest-reaching consequences, as the browser holds nearly two-thirds of the global browser market.

Who will profit? 

According to Google’s vision, consumers will be the primary beneficiaries of the transition, as their personal data will no longer be collected, processed, used, and possibly also traded by a myriad of companies across the globe. However, U.S. marketers do not share this view; two thirds of surveyed industry experts believe that the changes will not improve consumers’ control over their data, and over 50 percent think that privacy concerns will persist. Additionally, organizations skeptical of Google’s move argue that the company aims to conquer an even larger market share under the new cookieless conditions, as the search giant has access to consumer data from sources unavailable to its competitors. This is confirmed by the results of a recent survey showing that more than eight in 10 UK retail and e-commerce marketers were planning to move to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) after cookies have been phased out .

Who will lose? 

First and foremost, advertisers will lose. Without tracking, online ads will not be able to reach their target audience as well as they did before, and sales revenues, especially in the e-commerce sector, will suffer. This development will likely lead to a decline in digital advertising spending, not only because decreasing revenues often cause reduced spending in general but also because advertisers might decide to cut down on digital advertising in favor of more effective media formats. In addition, lower ad spending can negatively affect online publishers whose existence depends on ad revenues. As third-party cookies are the base for programmatic advertising, around which an entire ad tech subsector was built, vendors of supply-side and demand-side platforms, ad exchanges, and data management platforms will also experience a drop in earnings. Finally, if industry predictions come true and cookies will be replaced by first-party data (data a company collects via its own systems about its own customers), trade in consumer data will increase exponentially, disproving Google’s claims of putting user privacy first. On top, without third-party cookies, consumers will be facing a less personalized and thus less relevant online shopping experience without gains on the digital privacy front.

What is the advertising industry doing about it? 

Unsurprisingly, cookie deprecation and its consequences were named top marketing concerns of 2023. At the end of 2022, nearly 60 percent of marketers said they were either accelerating their readiness for a cookieless future or keeping it a high priority. This statement stands in stark contrast to the fact that three in four still relied heavily on third-party cookies in their digital advertising activities. What is more, nearly two thirds were planning to increase spending on cookie-dependent activations in 2023. By their refusal to take action, marketers are about to derail the growth of the companies they work for, and they know it. Three quarters believe that the end of third-party cookies will hurt their business. However, first signs of changes are on the horizon. Contextual advertising, seen as one of the most promising cookie replacement solutions, accounted for a third the global digital advertising spending in 2022 and is expected to increase approximately 2.5-fold by 2023. In the United States, spending directed at cookieless programmatic advertising is gaining market share. In the insurance industry, it has already exceeded 50 percent. In Europe, four major telecommunication providers are rolling out a joint venture called Utiq that offers publishers and advertisers an ID-based cookie alternative.

This text provides general information. Statista assumes no liability for the information given being complete or correct. Due to varying update cycles, statistics can display more up-to-date data than referenced in the text.
Published by Statista Research Department, Sep 6, 2023

Key insights

Share of marketers reliant on third-party cookies worldwide
75%
Share of businesses that were accelerating readiness for a cookieless future or keeping it a high priority worldwide
59%
Share of global advertisers & publishers that believed their revenue would increase after cookie phase-out
48%
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