Google kills off FLoC and drags its heels on Cookies as it pursues alternative exploits, while Apple further strengthens its customers' Privacy Protections!

After promising to phase out Cookies at the start of 2022, Google has gone back on its commitments as its replacement FLoC solution has been almost universally opposed by major industry players and regulators - and was certainly not compliant with GDPR or CCPA regulations. It leaves Google’s post third party cookie approach in tatters and with considerable work to build a new approach with broader industry and regulatory support.

Google’s Third Party Cookie support has thus been extended to 2023, and without a viable replacement, Google may want to push that date further into the future.

Apple and Google have teamed up on limiting interest-based advertising - to the detriment Facebook’s trillion-dollar ad ecosystem. Otherwise those two platforms remain mostly opposed in their intentions and actions.

Apple, alongside Mozilla and most browsing platforms are continually ramping up Privacy Protections for their customers - by default disabling all third-party cookies, and putting the consumer in control of whom they share their personal data with.

"Google, through Chrome and Android, are still pursuing tracking and advertising revenues which expose their customers to various privacy exploitations, which in turn are leading to an increasing number of data breaches."

Chrome used to be our main browser for many a years, while Google kind of made it bloated over time - with more and more Chrome OS functionality. Chrome is nowadays rather heavyweight and sucks up a lot of processor time and short-term memory. And because of how Google shares data and intelligence from its tracking - all those customers are exposed to unscrupulous actors within the tracking and advertising ecosystems.

Most other platforms have taken the side of their consumers - and increased protections to make their customers’ privacy details more secure.

People will ask how First Party Data fits into this evolving paradigm - where the truth is that of the major platform providers, only Google is pursuing Cookie extensions - everyone else is already heading in a different direction.

Current Cookies and their consequences largely conflict with prevailing GDPR and CCPA policies. The EU has a higher imperative to level fines on Google, and other providers, for failing to comply with its regulatory frameworks, and undermining its citizens’ rights to privacy.

Over the longer-term, Cookies in this format are still going to be phased out much like Flash was, and most socially responsible business and organisations have already turned towards First Party Data solutions, and are doing the painstaking work of building up direct permission based relationships.

We at Affino have always advocated a 1st party approach to tracking and advertising, building up trusted permission based relationships, which your audience can easily opt out of should they change their mind. You can much better control and react to your own consumers’ on-site preferences - so that is where you should be focusing your efforts.

"Companies that still side with Google will be failing in their Corporate Social Responsibility and will loose market share as a result."

We strongly advocate moving to 1st party data and direct relationships with your audience and any ad or promotional targeting, this typically takes two to three years to build up, so time is of the essence.

If you are looking for first hand advice on making this move successfully then simply reach out to us and start the conversation.