Everyone knows that cookies are an imperfect tool for advertisers, but everyone continues to rely on them, even though browser companies are phasing them out and new laws like GDPR are making them more difficult to use. That complacency was given a rude shock by Google’s January announcement that it would aim to “render third-party cookies obsolete” within two years.
The shift from third-party data
“This change is fundamentally good for publishers,” according to Michael Silberman of Piano, a paywall software company. “The end of third-party cookies means that advertising is going to depend on zero-party and first-party data, and...