Google's Cookie Reversal Does Not Change the Future or Our Strategy

Google has announced yet another update: third-party cookies will remain in Chrome for now, with no clear timeline or guarantee for their removal, as the development of alternatives is being pushed further into 2025.

This story has grabbed the headlines once again, a recurring pattern that has persisted over the past five years. Honestly, it feels like déjà vu.

The truth is, cookieless advertising is not some distant future; it's already a proven, successful reality.

Advertisers should not let Google's delay knock them off course. The future is not shifting back to cookies. If anything, it is accelerating toward environments where cookies were never an option in the first place.

The numbers tell the real story

The relevance of third-party cookies continues to decline. According to recent industry data:

• In 2025, consumers will spend less than 25% of their digital time inside a traditional web browser.
• Only about 60% of that browser time will be on browsers that still support third-party cookies.

This means that cookies are relevant for only around 15% of the total time people spend online. The vast majority of consumer time is spent in environments where cookies have never played a role, like CTV, podcasts, mobile apps, gaming, and digital out-of-home. These channels are growing rapidly, and they rely on entirely different infrastructures and strategies for targeting, measurement, and personalization.

🔗 See eMarketer’s latest on daily adult media consumption in 2025 across devices, activities, and platforms

Quantcast’s position: cookieless is the default, not the future

At Quantcast, we anticipated this shift early and built for it. Today:

• 72% of our business globally is already cookieless by default.
• We have hundreds of case studies across industries and regions that demonstrate stronger performance without third-party cookies.
• Our cookieless solutions aren’t just weathering the chaos; they are thriving and making a measurable impact.

This is not theory; it is happening in the real world right now. At Quantcast, cookieless advertising is not a fallback. It is a competitive advantage, and it is delivering success for brands today.

Why Google's delay should not change advertiser behavior

• Cookies will continue to diminish: Consumers are moving faster to app-based and streaming environments, where cookies never existed.
• Regulation is only getting stricter: Privacy frameworks like GDPR, CCPA, and others are tightening, making reliance on cookies risky and unsustainable.
• Innovation is pulling ahead: Forward-thinking marketers are already building persistent, privacy-first strategies to win in a signal-scarce world.

Optimizing around third-party cookies in 2025 is like doubling down on DVDs when the world has already moved to streaming.

What’s next: building for a truly cookieless future

Pixel-less solutions

Some of our customers are working with us to actively and rapidly develop new architectures that eliminate the need for a pixel on advertiser websites entirely through a conversion API approach.

Early results from pilot campaigns have been very encouraging, with performance metrics already tracking to match, and eventually exceed, traditional pixel-based solutions.

As adoption scales and optimization continues, we believe conversion APIs will unlock even greater performance, privacy, and flexibility for brands in a truly cookieless and pixel-less world.

Omnichannel reach

Whether a customer sees an ad on TV, hears it in a podcast, interacts in a mobile game, or passes a digital billboard, Quantcast enables brands to make their advertising addressable across every channel and deliver measurable performance wherever audiences are engaged.

Advertising success no longer starts, or ends, with the web browser. Quantcast is building the platform for advertising across the entire open internet.

🔗 Discover how Quantcast is transforming omnichannel advertising

Google’s delay is a headline. Quantcast’s strategy is the headline that matters. Cookieless is here. It is working. And it is where ambitious advertisers are winning today, and where even greater opportunities lie tomorrow. If you are still optimizing around third-party cookies, you are optimizing for yesterday. At Quantcast, we are building for what is next.