• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, May 1, 2024

Another day, another delay in the deprecation and demise of the cookie.  Are we really surprised?  Did we really think this was going to happen in 2024?

Many people probably did.  At least, it’s a good assumption that people expected to see it happen, since it’s already been delayed at least twice.

Cookies have been an essential piece of the online advertising equation almost since it started back in 1994-1995.  At first everything was about contextual targeting, but cookies quickly became a commonplace term with the birth of the ad network and the desire for scale from advertisers.  With the expansion to mobile and other devices, the concept of cookies has morphed into different types of identifiers, and those identifiers have birthed a business worth billions. 

Fast-forward to today. It’s fascinating that an entire industry is held hostage to the possibility that cookies will go away because the largest advertising platform, and the company who holds the keys to billions of dollars and hundreds of millions of users due to its dominance with the browser, wants cookies to go away in order to secure its future.

How did we get here?

Two things are at play.  First, someone allowed Google to own the internet.  They don’t really own it, but they have been given enough leeway and opportunity to dictate the underlying currency of the web.

That’s capitalism -- and I actually have no problem with it.  Whoever does the most to enable the internet growth should be given the chance to be rewarded.

But what I’d love to suggest to Google is this: If we are going to trust you to print a new currency, can you also help curb the issues and addictions that are making the internet less desirable?

I refer to the issues of fake content, misinformation and social media.  There is simply too much stupidity and negativity floating around.  You can’t stop it, but maybe you could help label and police it?  Your self-stated goal is to help organize the world’s information.  Does that also mean you could help organize fact from fiction and help educate people that not everything they see online is real or truthful?

I know this is an idealistic ask, but since you have been reaping the rewards of the growth you have built, could you also take some of the responsibility to help us make it better for future generations? 

This is not a demand, but a request -- one that stems from watching my kids find ways around the rules we put in place and their deep focus on the web.  We are training AI models on misinformation and setting up a larger issue down the road.  Maybe you could help?

The second thing at play is that as an industry, we needed to have the consumer’s interests at heart, and we don’t.  Let’s be honest.  We put our own needs first, and privacy was not one of them.

We talk about privacy a lot and pretend it’s important to us, but it’s really not.  It is a checkbox for the line item of governance, but most companies stop there.

We could take consumer privacy more into account and develop more anonymized ways to target and report on performance, but we don’t.  Google is apparently trying, and the rest of the web is sitting idly by, waiting to see what it comes up with.

It's an interesting dilemma we’ve gotten ourselves into.  I don’t think we anticipated this, but here we are.  So, what will we do about it?