Member-only story
The Era of Privacy-First Web
I hope 2021 sees significant & long-lasting changes in privacy regulation
This week Google made a major announcement that no doubt put the fear of God into all digital marketers. The cookie is dead. Long live the cookie.
Google, the internet search giant, said this week that it’s done tracking our every move as we interact with the web via search, voice, movement and connected devices. It promises that after fully eliminating its use of third-party cookies over the next year, it won’t adopt replacements that essentially do the same thing.
The end of tracking
That doesn’t mean the big five internet companies won’t continue to curate user data they collect directly from us when we visit sites and services they control. According to Google’s Director of Product Management at Google, David Temkin, “People shouldn’t have to accept being tracked across the web in order to get the benefits of relevant advertising. And advertisers don’t need to track individual consumers across the web to get the performance benefits of digital advertising”. Advances in aggregation, anonymization, on-device processing, and other privacy-preserving technologies show a clear path away from individual identifiers. Platforms now have the ability to hide individuals in large crowds of people with…
