Google Third-Party Cookies, Adds LiveRamp to Data Clean Room Lineup
One year. That’s how long Google says publishers have to test — and raise any red flags on — the cookie alternatives in its Chrome Privacy Sandbox. In a recent announcement, Joey Trotz, director of product for Google’s Privacy Sandbox Ecosystems, all but guaranteed the company would finally be depreciating third-party cookies in the second half of 2024.
That’s not all.
Google also announced that it had selected the data collaboration platform LiveRamp as one of the major clean room technology providers to integrate with its first-party Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation (PAIR) solution. LiveRamp joins an impressive list of peers chosen by Google for the project, including Habu and InfoSum.
Having Google Display & Video 360’s PAIR integrated into the LiveRamp platform should make it easier for publishers to privately reconcile their first-party data for marketing use cases, such as when delivering relevant ads using first-party data that doesn’t rely on third-party cookies.
All brands working with LiveRamp will eventually be able to activate PAIR. For publishers, PAIR has been added as an add-on module to LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS). The company has enabled more than a dozen publishers already, with a goal of scaling to 100+ by the end of this summer.
“Our integration with Google Display & Video 360’s Publisher and Advertiser Identity Reconciliation is about providing a sustainable solution for publishers and marketers to incorporate into their first-party data strategy, in particular delivering better return on ad spend than cookie-based targeting, as well as a better consumer experience,” says Travis Clinger, senior vice president of activations and addressability at LiveRamp. “This partnership builds upon the work we’ve been doing across the industry for the past seven years in evolving away from relying on third-party cookies to embracing authenticated, first-party addressability.”
While this isn’t LiveRamp’s first integration with Google, being selected as a clean room technology provider to integrate with PAIR is still a big deal, not just for LiveRamp, but also for advertisers that now have a way to get significantly more mileage out of their digital campaigns.
As an example of what’s possible, a car rental company running an ad campaign with Google could use LiveRamp and PAIR to match their email subscriber list with a travel website or auto blog’s email newsletter list. This would allow the company to deliver relevant ads to people on the publisher’s website, since consumers have an existing opt-in relationship with the marketer and publisher.
“With PAIR, marketers can benefit from data collaboration and securely match their first-party data with publishers’ first-party data, providing a sustainable solution beyond the scheduled third-party cookie deprecation,” Clinger says. “Since PAIR only relies on marketers’ and publishers’ first-party data, marketers can build their Display & Video 360 campaigns sustainably, knowing that PAIR is compliant and will continue to work even as third-party signals continue to erode.”
One of the biggest questions PAIR answers is how marketers will be able to run Display & Video 360 campaigns once third-party cookies are deprecated. While the 2024 Chrome deadline is the last domino to fall in the deprecation of the third-party cookie, some publishers and marketers are still waiting until the last possible moment to plan beyond this milestone. Clinger says PAIR addresses one of their biggest outstanding questions.
Shifting to newer solutions now, rather than waiting until the last minute, means marketers can benefit from the scale of third-party cookies while they still exist. Clinger recommends that marketers run campaigns with and without cookies to test and benchmark their campaigns, and get a better sense of what to expect once third-party cookies are truly deprecated.
“It’s important for everyone to remember that the ecosystem is not just sitting around and waiting for Chrome to phase out third-party cookies — cookieless is already here, and 50% of the internet has no cookie across Safari, Firefox, and Edge. Shifting to an identifier that works in already-cookieless environments enables marketers to reach these environments today, whether they’re looking for inventory in cookieless browsers, CTV, or mobile in-app,” Clinger says. “Marketers and publishers can find considerable benefits shifting to cookieless solutions as soon as possible, rather than waiting until the eleventh hour.”
