Google Test Shows Cookieless Ad Targeting Works Pretty Well
Third-party cookie deprecation lets Google please privacy advocates while harming competitors. Lest the competitive benefits become too clear, the company is eager to show that advertisers can get acceptable results from alternatives like contextual targeting, interest-based cohorts, and publishers’ first-party data. It just released a test concluding exactly that: ad campaigns without third party cookies performed only a little worse than those using cookies. (Details here.) They mention but don’t stress that the test doesn’t consider lost measurement or retargeting.