Publishers Divided on What to Do in the Cookieless Future

As the deprecation of third-party cookies nears, publishers, advertisers and tech companies have been forced to figure out what the new fundamentals of digital advertising, such as audience targeting and ad serving, will look like in the aftermath. In the midst of industrywide indecision, the frontrunner to replace the once-ubiquitous cookie is the Unified ID 2.0., the open-source technology created by The Trade Desk. For UID2—or any alternative identifier—to be a viable option for advertisers, it needs wide-scale adoption. But concerns over data leakage and consumer privacy have given publishers pause. So far, 39 have embraced the technology, including heavyweights like The Washington Post and media agencies like IPG on the buy side. However, critical holdouts, such as The New York Times and The Guardian, have given different rationales for their hesitancy, a reflection of the diversity of motives at play. And now that Google has extended the deadline for cookie deprecation another year, some worry the momentum that has buoyed the movement so far will slow. “We think that this is not a UID2 or Trade Desk decision; we think this is a common currency for the open internet decision,” said Catherine Patterson, senior director of marketplace strategy at The Trade Desk. “We want publishers to look at it that way, rather than as a replacement for cookies.” A common currency Recently, The Washington Post has generated significant revenue by selling software-as-a-service products, such as its ad network Zeus and content management system Arc XP, to other publishers. Because of the b-to-b relationships it has cultivated with these publishers, The Post was receptive to UID2. Its vp of commercial technology Jarrod Dicker said that all 100 Zeus partner sites would be able to integrate the identifier technology. The acknowledgment underscores the importance of establishing a common currency for identity. “Unified ID 2.0’s open source approach appealed to us as we test and integrate different solutions for identity in the year ahead,” Dicker said in a statement. The Post has more to benefit from by adopting and testing an array of identifier solutions. The publisher has already invested time and resources into building a media landscape that relies on connectivity and embraced identity solutions that support that vision. “When it comes to solutions like UID2, buyers are used to it and they’re going to want to keep buying that way,” said Paul Bannister, chief strategy officer at ad management firm CafeMedia. Data safety The New York Times has become a model of exceptionalism in recent years. In its approach to UID2, the publisher once again plays the outlier. "The space is evolving rapidly, and we will continue to evaluate any solution that fully protects our reader," according to Lisa Ryan Howard, senior vice president, advertising at The New York Times. "For now, we and our ad partners are seeing strong performance using our comprehensive first-party suite that allows for advanced level targeting." The Times already has more than 100 million users who registered with an email address. As a result, it has little incentive to incorporate an outside technology that would effectively replicate an effort it has already perfected. Plus, using a third-party technology like UID2 poses a risk of data contamination. “For any system that involves authentication, you have to worry about whether you could be leaking the data of your most valuable customers,” Bannister said. Wait and see For the majority of publishers, wait and see has become the popular approach. Ad buyers have yet to embrace any cookie replacement en masse, so publishers miss little by sitting on the sidelines. By not investing in what could ultimately be a failure, cash-conscious publishers are also making a defensible financial decision, at least in the short term. Like hundreds of others, The Guardian has neither explicitly endorsed nor rejected UID2. The Guardian declined to comment on this story. However, it has openly expressed skepticism for another proposed solution: Google’s Federated Learning of Cohorts. It has panned the new technology as invasive to consumer privacy, a concern that it shares with The Times and other abstainers, because FLoCs still rely on tracking user behavior to create profiles for advertisers. The Guardian’s disavowal of FLoCs and its silence on UID2 reflects the position many publishers have found themselves in. Cookies were imperfect, and their replacements will be, too. But an internet without identifier technology is nearly impossible to imagine. The schism has once again underscored that the primary fault of the media ecosystem is not a lack of ingenuity, but of agreement.

Data Security

Publishers Remain Divided on What to Do in the Cookieless Future

Indecision caused by Unified ID 2.0 is reflected in the industrywide fragmentation

Mark Stenberg

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Mark Stenberg