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.

What must worry Google above all is the decline in search marketing itself.  You’ll recall we reported last week that search’s share of U.S. Internet ad spend has been falling.  Today I’ll add this Jungle Scout report that people are starting their online shopping searches less with “search engines” (presumably mostly Google) and Amazon, and more with Walmart and TikTok.  Yikes!

Hi, it’s Jamie, Senior Intern at the CDP Institute Department of the Obvious.  Everyone here is worrying about a U.S. debt default, but I have no money and the gruel supply seems stable.  So I’m free to share this warning from the U.S. Surgeon General that social media can harm the mental health of young people.  Washington’s credit rating may fall, but this remains AAA obvious.