Executive Summary

The deprecation of the third-party cookie in Google’s Chrome browser, a change expected by 2022, is driving publishers to create alternative paths to generating digital display advertising revenues on their websites. But the death of the cookie also opens up unique opportunities for content publishers to reclaim a central role in the digital ad ecosystem as entities with direct, trusted relationships with their audiences.

How will the deprecation of the third-party cookie affect publishers’ ability to monetize their sites?

Publishers are the most exposed parties to third-party cookie loss, which will affect ad addressability, causing programmatic cost per thousand (CPM) pricing on the unidentified web to plummet. Publishers expect to increasingly leverage their own first-party data in a cookieless future.

How are publishers evaluating new or proposed identity solutions?

Like marketers, publishers are examining various identity solutions designed to replace the third-party cookie as a persistent identifier on the web. Buy-side adoption will be among the strongest incentives for publishers to integrate any solution, but publishers should also ensure that solutions are compliant with data privacy regulation, will drive yield, and are manageable for their teams and on their sites.

How can publishers prepare for the deprecation of the third-party cookie in Chrome?

Publishers are building or expanding their first-party data strategies, such as increasing their authenticated users, advancing their contextual and behavioral data collection and insights capabilities, and exploring data collaborations with advertisers or brands. Work is also being done in Prebid.org, in collaboration with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), to develop a standardized taxonomy that would allow publisher first-party segments to be transacted programmatically at scale.

WHAT’S IN THIS REPORT? This report investigates how publishers are evaluating identity solutions, building first-party data strategies, and collaborating with partners to monetize their sites without the third-party tracking cookie.

KEY STAT: Nearly half (49%) of US digital media professionals polled by Integral Ad Science in October 2020 cited third-party cookie deprecation as one of their top three challenges for the industry in the following 12 months.