Outlook

Ad Tech Is Primed for Its Own Roaring '20s

Battles between Big Tech players and government oversight will shape the industry for the next decade

Illustration of Google Chrome, Apple, the EU flag and a computer chip — Apple and Google's vice-like grip on the wider digital media landscape means the future of the sector is intertwined with the fate of Big Tech.Trent Joaquin for Adweek

Where We Were

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Google rocked the ad-tech world when it confirmed it would drop support for third-party cookies, the common currency for programmatic trading, in its Chrome web browser in 2022.

After Adweek first reported that Google was contemplating the changes in March 2019, imitating policies in Apple’s Safari, the industry went into a state of what Ratko Vidakovic, founder of consultancy firm AdProfs, calls “systemic flux.”

This prompted a raft of ID initiatives from multiple vendors that wanted to continue online ad targeting independent of third-party cookies.