For years, third-party cookies were the backbone of digital advertising, enabling brands to track and target users with pinpoint accuracy. But the landscape has shifted dramatically. Signal loss goes far beyond browser settings—it’s the culmination of years of regulatory change, platform restrictions, and growing consumer demand for privacy.
It all started with Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention in 2017, followed by GDPR (2018), CCPA (2019), and Apple’s App Tracking Transparency in 2021—all of which chipped away at traditional tracking methods. Browsers were no exception: Firefox blocked third-party cookies by default in 2019, and Safari followed in 2020. Then came Google, whose long-running and often-revised plan to eliminate third-party cookies in Chrome has added to the industry’s instability. Their latest reversal in April 2025 is just the latest twist in a story that keeps evolving. But signal loss runs deeper—it's a broader disruption that’s reshaping digital advertising well beyond cookies or Chrome.
Today, more than half of the open web is already devoid of identifiers. Agencies and brands must navigate a hybrid world—where some signals remain, but many have faded or are fragmented.
While relying solely on identifiers limits reach and creates fragile strategies, ignoring IDs entirely means missing the value that still exists in identity-based signals. The smart approach isn't about choosing sides — it's about intelligently integrating both approaches, in a world that will remain mixed.
