WHY GOOGLE'S DELAY IS A VICTORY FOR ADVERTISERS

If you have been following the recent news in the world of digital marketing, you probably heard Google announce its plans to keep 3rd party cookies - which came as a shock to the digital marketing community. 
Lets take a quick look at the timeline for this process:

• 2020: Google announces that 3rd party cookies will be going away, but no date set at this time
• 2022: After a two-year delay, Google tells the public they are going to continue delaying the process but that its coming in the next year
• 2023: Google Chrome begins testing the removal of 3rd party cookies
• 2024: After testing - Google decides to delay the phase out again. Announces that 2025 will be the year 3rd party cookies will disappear
• July 22 2024: Google decides to keep 3rd party cookies

For years, we have been preparing for the departure of these cookies and making sure a first party data strategy was implemented. But unlike the preparation the tech world took for Y2K (hard to believe that was 24 years ago), the systems put into play for this transition have only helped digital marketers - and in light of this situation can still be viewed as a "positive strategy move."

Having to incorporate a first party data plan has boosted results we have seen with efforts in Facebook, Search, and Display advertising - the aggregation of this data has helped us to build lookalike audiences based off of up-to-date customer information. In addition to that, we are able to cluster this data into different personas and target them with different messaging. 

So while it may have seemed like some kind of cruel joke Google played on the entire digital marketing community, it forced us to become better - which helped to increase results for advertisers around the world... Well played Google, you won this round.