Advertisers expect Google to delay its cookie phase-out, according to industry survey

More than half of advertisers expect Google to punt the depreciation of third-party cookies—again.

That’s according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s 2024 State of Data report, which surveyed more than 500 “data and advertising decision-makers” from brands, agencies, and publishers.

Though 94% of respondents said cookies will eventually disappear, only 42% expected it to happen this year, the IAB found. FWIW, Google still says it’s on track to phase out cookies by the second half of 2024.

What else is in the report: Advertisers are (predictably) anticipating signal loss across the advertising ecosystem, either because of aforementioned platform changes or because of the tsunami of privacy legislation at the state level. This year, new privacy legislation in Texas, Oregon, and Montana will take effect, and New Hampshire just passed a privacy bill last week.

• 44% of respondents representing brands said they’ve turned to external legal counsel.

Meanwhile, advertisers expect their jobs to get harder: Nearly three-quarters of advertisers said they expected to be less reliant on signals like “browser history, real-time signals, PII (e.g., email, name) and location.” Around the same percentage of respondents said they expected their ability to measure ROI and attribute campaigns to be reduced.

Nearly six in 10 said they’re less confident in the accuracy of the data shared by programmatic and social media platforms. Not great!

Game plan: In response to those changes, advertisers are emphasizing their own data. More than 70% said they’re planning on increasing their first-party data sets, up from just 41% in 2022.