Don’t worry about the end of cookies in the Google Chrome browser in 2024

by Katrin Nebermann

Don’t worry about the end of cookies in the Google Chrome browser in 2024

Browsers such as Firefox and Safari have been blocking third-party cookies since 2019 and 2020 respectively. After several previous announcements and postponements, Google has now also begun to do this step by step in January 2024. With a market share of over 40% in Germany and even over 60% worldwide, the impact here is significantly greater than with the other browsers.

Blocking third-party cookies has no negative impact on web analysis and conversion tracking. For years, all well-known providers have switched to first-party cookies or even cookie-free solutions. Only retargeting or remarketing is now much more difficult. Advertisers can therefore measure the success of marketing measures as well or as poorly as before. However, the reliability and quality of the measurement is affected by other factors:

1. Cookie consent refusal
2. Ad and tracking blocking through browser extensions
3. Tracking protection measures of the browser

In France and Spain, analytics cookies may also be used on websites without consent under certain conditions. In Germany in particular, however, an exemption from the consent requirement only applies if statistical cookies are not used and the data processing is carried out in the mildest form in accordance with the overriding legitimate interest.

Attention! Data protection experts warn against the use of the new extended consent mode of Google Analytics. Dr. Thomas Schwenke from Datenschutz-Generator.de is coming in his article on Google Analytics Consent Mode concludes: “It is true that the consent mode also enables the cookie-free collection of user data. However, the extended implementation of the consent mode in Google Analytics is practically useless under EU law, as it can only be used with consent.”

Depending on the solution, the obligation to obtain consent may relate only to the use of cookies or to the complete collection of data. Depending on the configuration, extensions such as Adblock Plus can be used to completely block the scripts of web analysis services. The tracking protection measures of the browsers, on the other hand, only restrict cookie runtimes or limit the recording of referrer links and link parameters.

What to do?

With etracker analytics, visits and conversions can be measured without consent and uploaded to Google Ads & Co. on the server side. The option of tracking via a separate sub-domain helps against tracking blocking, protection and prevention. In the near future, the new etracker tag and consent manager will also support extended conversions, which are based on the server-side transmission of conversions together with the encrypted e-mail addresses of users. This mix of data protection-friendly, browser-based and server-side systems will continue to provide a sufficient database to make data-driven decisions and operate algorithms for campaign optimization. This in turn is the basis for achieving optimum campaign performance.