After years of warning advertisers that it would phase out third-party cookies, Google has officially backtracked by abandoning its alternative, the Privacy Sandbox.

Google is retiring the suite of privacy tools “in light of their low levels of adoption,” reads an Oct. 17 blog post by Google’s VP of Privacy Sandbox Anthony Chavez. This news follows Google backing out of its user-choice prompt in April, which itself was a reversal of Google’s plan to fully deprecate cookies.

Google's Sandbox APIs have sparked helpful privacy discussions, but advertisers were widely disinterested with Sandbox as an alternative to cookies, according to Anthony Katsur, CEO at IAB Tech Lab.

“While Google’s Privacy Sandbox consumed an extraordinary amount of industry focus, energy, and resources, it also suffered from deep technical flaws,” he said. “Nonetheless, it played an invaluable role in shining a spotlight on the future of identity and addressability in a privacy-first world.”

The cookie conversation gets stale

The decision isn’t shocking, said Bob Regular, CEO of Infolinks Media.

“The Privacy Sandbox was a weak cure to the self-inflicted wound of cookie elimination,” he said. “Everyone made a valiant effort, but it became obvious it wasn’t a real solution.”

For some marketers, the long will they/won't they cookie discourse had grown tired. “Reacting to conversations about cookies” was what Kyle Eckhart, COO at Rain the Growth Agency, said he planned to prioritize this year.

With the threat of deprecation looming, many marketers began to prepare for a cookieless future. But without a pressing need to adapt their strategies, some have abandoned their efforts. Anticipating the disappearance of third-party cookies, 58.3% of US CMOs created a stronger data strategy to capture better information in February 2022, which decreased to 41.9% in September 2024, according to a survey by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Shifting the spotlight off Google

While the Privacy Sandbox isn’t the solution that will stick, the Google uncertainty has spurred advertisers to build in-house capabilities to rely less on third-party cookies, said Hannah Woodham, SVP of paid channel marketing and operations at Mod Op.

“Google’s decision to abandon Privacy Sandbox is another reminder that the future of programmatic advertising will rely less on third-party audience signals and more on the strength of an advertiser’s own data and context strategy,” said Woodham.

• Siloed or incomplete data is the top reason US brand and agency marketers question the accuracy of their measurement (49.5%), per a July 2025 TransUnion and EMARKETER survey.

The uncertainty created a common industry challenge that advanced privacy standards, which will “undoubtedly shape the future of the ecosystem,” said Mateusz Rumiński, VP of Product at PrimeAudience.

“Strategies now will likely pivot to AI to introduce new and more innovative ways to target audiences and interact between systems in an agent-like way,” he said.

Consumers face privacy fatigue

While advertisers scramble to offer privacy‑first targeting, consumer concern for privacy has waned, and convenience often wins, said Misha Williams, COO at GWI.

• Consumers who have embraced AI have questioned how much they care about privacy: Almost half (49%) prefer a balance between privacy and personalization when using these tools, opposed to one or the other, per a May 2025 Kantar survey.

“For brands, this moment calls for transparency and a renewed commitment to building trust with consumers, which starts with understanding how they feel about privacy,” said Williams.

There is also a knowledge gap when it comes to consumers and privacy. When they accept cookies, only 1 in 10 (9.9%) understand their implications, per a May 2024 EMARKETER survey.

Reliance on clicks with third-party cookies and privacy workarounds like the Sandbox don’t actually capture how consumers search for products, said Charles Taylor, senior marketing manager at Herdify.

“We’ve become way too reliant on signals that don’t reflect how humans make decisions in real life,” he said. “As the ecosystem evolves, there’s a growing need to plan around real-world behavior, where influence spreads through social circles, communities, and offline interactions… not just digital footprints.”