At A Glance
Google’s third-party cookie deprecation plans are on hold, but privacy expectations continue to rise. Marketers still need identity-based, data-responsible solutions to understand and reach audiences effectively. Experian helps brands stay connected through privacy-first identity, data collaboration, and measurement solutions that perform across channels, with or without cookies.In this article…
The marketing world has been preparing for years for the end of third-party cookies, and the news has shifted again. In 2025, Google paused its plan to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome, opting instead to introduce new privacy controls that let users manage how their data is shared. Even with this change, one truth remains: privacy-first; identity-driven marketing is no longer optional. For marketers, it’s about moving beyond reliance on cookies toward durable strategies built on trust, consent, and connected data.
What is cookie deprecation?
Cookie deprecation refers to browsers ending support for third-party cookies, which have long allowed advertisers to track user activity across multiple websites. These cookies were the foundation of behavioral targeting and attribution. By contrast, first-party cookies, created by a brand’s own website, will continue to function. They store essential information like logins or preferences and are central to modern data collection strategies.
The change aims to improve privacy and transparency, giving users more control over their information. For marketers, it represents a shift from broad tracking to consented, identity-based engagement.
Experian’s view: While third-party cookies may linger longer than expected, identity should remain the cornerstone of every marketing strategy.
Why is cookie deprecation reshaping the industry?
The shift toward privacy-first marketing didn’t begin with Google, but Chrome’s decision to limit third-party cookies has amplified the impact. Safari and Firefox removed third-party tracking years ago, but Chrome’s dominance, with roughly 65 percent of the global browser market, makes its shift a defining moment for advertisers.
- Apple App Tracking Transparency (ATT): Requires user permission before app tracking.
- Global Privacy Control (GPC): Lets users signal how their data can be shared.
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA): Enforce consent and transparency in data use.
- Google Tracking Protection: Now limits cross-site tracking for 1 percent of Chrome users, about 30 million people, before a full rollout.
The platform response
Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative and new user privacy control interface aim to balance personalization with user protection. These updates mark a shift toward data transparency rather than full deprecation.
Experian supports this evolution by helping marketers adapt through privacy-led identity, data collaboration, and measurement solutions that meet compliance standards while maintaining addressability and performance across channels.
How will cookie deprecation affect marketers?
Marketers will notice several shifts:
- Less cross-site visibility: Without third-party cookies, connecting behavior across websites becomes difficult, making it harder to attribute conversions.
- Greater dependence on first-party data: Data collected directly from consumers (emails, preferences, purchase history) will be crucial for targeting and measurement.
- Increased adoption of alternative IDs: Solutions like Experian’s alternative IDs help maintain addressability and measurement in a cookieless world.
- Renewed focus on contextual advertising: Relevance now depends on where an ad appears rather than who sees it.
- New compliance expectations: Marketers must prove transparency and respect for consent under tightening global privacy laws.
What challenges should marketers expect with cookie deprecation?
Marketers face both operational and strategic hurdles as third-party cookies lose value.
Addressability and targeting gaps
Without universal identifiers, reaching audiences across channels becomes fragmented. Advertisers must unify data from CRM systems, mobile apps, and offline touchpoints to maintain reach.
Measurement and attribution complexity
As cookies disappear, so do last-click and view-through models. Solutions must rely on first-party data and probabilistic modeling to evaluate performance.
Privacy and consent management
Data collection now requires clear opt-ins, user control interfaces, and secure consent management systems that align with IAB standards.
Resource and skill constraints
Testing new identity and data solutions can be costly. Smaller teams may struggle to integrate clean rooms, universal IDs, or new reporting APIs.
Experian’s role: Experian supports marketers through this transition with privacy-compliant data infrastructure, identity graphs, and measurement tools that work across every major platform.
How can marketers adapt to a cookieless future?
Cookies may still exist, but durable identity strategies are the future of digital marketing. Here’s how to prepare:
- Use first-party data: Collect information directly from your customers through loyalty programs, preference centers, and interactive content.
Invest in analytics that translate this data into insight. - Establish a trusted identity foundation: Experian’s Digital Graph connects more than 4.2 billion digital identifiers, linking households and devices in privacy-compliant ways. That means marketers can expand their addressable reach and understand audiences without relying on cookies. Experian’s data-collaboration solutions let you combine your first-party data with partner insights securely, unlocking deeper audience understanding.
- Explore alternative targeting technologies: Contextual methods powered by Experian’s data accuracy ranked #1 by Truthset, help you maintain personalization while respecting privacy.
See how Experian’s identity resolution and data collaboration solutions can help you adapt in a cookieless world.
What are the best practices for post-cookie marketing?
- Be transparent: Make consent simple and clear, and show how data adds value. Experian helps brands maintain transparency through privacy-first data solutions built on consented consumer information.
- Prioritize data quality: High-quality, verified data builds confidence and improves ROI. Experian’s accurate and validated data assets ensure marketers reach real people with relevant messages.
- Choose the right partners: Work with technology providers like Experian that support privacy regulations and enable interoperability across platforms.
- Keep the customer experience central: Relevance and respect earn long-term loyalty, values embedded in Experian’s approach to responsible marketing.
What does the future look like for advertising without cookies?
The end of cookies isn’t the end of personalization. It’s a chance to design advertising that earns consumer trust. Marketers who connect data responsibly and measure real outcomes will outperform those chasing outdated identifiers.
Experian already helps global brands build this future through:
- Consumer Sync identity solution: Enables consistent, privacy-safe engagement across channels.
- Consumer View data solution: Delivers compliant, data-driven insights to inform data-driven marketing decisions.
- Digital and Offline Identity Graph: Provides scalable connectivity across digital and offline environments for a unified customer view.
Learn how Experian can help you thrive after cookie deprecation
Cookie deprecation changes how digital marketing works, but it doesn’t erase the value of data. With Experian’s identity, connectivity, and trust-based solutions, you can continue reaching audiences effectively and measure what matters.
Explore how Experian can help you connect confidently in a cookieless world
FAQs
Cookie deprecation refers to browsers ending support for third-party cookies, which track users across sites. This shift promotes greater privacy and transparency while encouraging marketers to use first-party and identity-based data for targeting and measurement.
As of September 2025, Google paused its plan to fully deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome. The company will introduce new user privacy controls that allow individuals to choose how their data is shared, while continuing to test privacy-preserving APIs through its Privacy Sandbox.
Safari and Firefox already block third-party cookies, and other browsers have adopted similar restrictions. While Chrome’s deprecation is paused, its large user base, more than 60 percent of global traffic, means its future policies will continue to influence how marketers plan and measure campaigns.
Even with Google’s pause, marketers should keep building privacy-first strategies. Focus on:
– Strengthening first-party data through loyalty programs and preference centers.
– Using Experian’s Digital Graph to connect audiences across devices and environments.
– Activating with Consumer Sync® for consistent, privacy-safe engagement.
– Collaborating securely through Experian’s data collaboration solutions, which allow brands to share insights responsibly.
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Originally appeared on MarTech Series Marketing’s understanding of identity has evolved rapidly over the past decade, much like the shifting media landscape itself. From the early days of basic direct mail targeting to today's complex omnichannel environment, identity has become both more powerful and more fragmented. Each era has brought new tools, challenges, and opportunities, shaping how brands interact with their customers. We’ve moved from traditional media like mail, newspapers, and linear/network TV, to cable TV, the internet, mobile devices, and apps. Now, multiple streaming platforms dominate, creating a far more complex media landscape. As a result, understanding the customer journey and reaching consumers across these various touchpoints has become increasingly difficult. Managing frequency and ensuring effective communication across channels is now more challenging than ever. This development has led to a fragmented view of the consumer, making it harder for marketers to ensure that they are reaching the right audience at the right time while also avoiding oversaturation. Marketers must now navigate a fragmented customer journey across multiple channels, each with its own identity signals, to stitch together a cohesive view of the customer. Let’s break down this evolution, era by era, to understand how identity has progressed—and where it’s headed. 2010-2015: The rise of digital identity – Cookies and MAIDs Between 2010 and 2015, the digital era fundamentally changed how marketers approached identity. Mobile usage surged during this time, and programmatic advertising emerged as the dominant method for reaching consumers across the internet. The introduction of cookies and mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) became the foundation for tracking users across the web and mobile apps. With these identifiers, marketers gained new capabilities to deliver targeted, personalized messages and drive efficiency through programmatic advertising. This era gave birth to powerful tools for targeting. Marketers could now follow users’ digital footprints, regardless of whether they were browsing on desktop or mobile. This leap in precision allowed brands to optimize spend and performance at scale, but it came with its limitations. Identity was still tied to specific browsers or devices, leaving gaps when users switched platforms. The fragmentation across different devices and the reliance on cookies and MAIDs meant that a seamless, unified view of the customer was still out of reach. 2015-2020: The age of walled gardens From 2015 to 2020, the identity landscape grew more complex with the rise of walled gardens. Platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon created closed ecosystems of first-party data, offering rich, self-declared insights about consumers. These platforms built massive advertising businesses on the strength of their user data, giving marketers unprecedented targeting precision within their environments. However, the rise of walled gardens also marked the start of new challenges. While these platforms provided detailed identity solutions within their walls, they didn’t communicate with one another. Marketers could target users with pinpoint accuracy inside Facebook or Google, but they couldn’t connect those identities across different ecosystems. This siloed approach to identity left marketers with an incomplete picture of the customer journey, and brands struggled to piece together a cohesive understanding of their audience across platforms. The promise of detailed targeting was tempered by the fragmentation of the landscape. Marketers were dealing with disparate identity solutions, making it difficult to track users as they moved between these closed environments and the open web. 2020-2025: The multi-ID landscape – CTV, retail media, signal loss, and privacy By 2020, the identity landscape had splintered further, with the rise of connected TV (CTV) and retail media adding even more complexity to the mix. Consumers now engaged with brands across an increasing number of channels—CTV, mobile, desktop, and even in-store—and each of these channels had its own identifiers and systems for tracking. Simultaneously, privacy regulations are tightening the rules around data collection and usage. This, coupled with the planned deprecation of third-party cookies and MAIDs has thrown marketers into a state of flux. The tools they had relied on for years were disappearing, and new solutions had yet to fully emerge. The multi-ID landscape was born, where brands had to navigate multiple identity systems across different platforms, devices, and environments. Retail media networks became another significant player in the identity game. As large retailers like Amazon and Walmart built their own advertising ecosystems, they added yet another layer of first-party data to the mix. While these platforms offer robust insights into consumer behavior, they also operate within their own walled gardens, further fragmenting the identity landscape. With cookies and MAIDs being phased out, the industry began to experiment with alternatives like first-party data, contextual targeting, and new universal identity solutions. The challenge and opportunity for marketers lies in unifying these fragmented identity signals to create a consistent and actionable view of the customer. 2025: The omnichannel imperative Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, the identity landscape will continue to evolve, but the focus remains the same: activating and measuring across an increasingly fragmented and complex media environment. Consumers now expect seamless, personalized experiences across every channel—from CTV to digital to mobile—and marketers need to keep up. The future of identity lies in interoperability, scale, and availability. Marketers need solutions that can connect the dots across different platforms and devices, allowing them to follow their customers through every stage of the journey. Identity must be actionable in real-time, allowing for personalization and relevance across every touchpoint, so that media can be measurable and attributable. Brands that succeed in 2025 and beyond will be those that invest in scalable, omnichannel identity solutions. They’ll need to embrace privacy-friendly approaches like first-party data, while also ensuring their systems can adapt to an ever-changing landscape. Adapting to the future of identity The evolution of identity has been marked by increasing complexity, but also by growing opportunity. As marketers adapt to a world without third-party cookies and MAIDs, the need for unified identity solutions has never been more urgent. Brands that can navigate the multi-ID landscape will unlock new levels of efficiency and personalization, while those that fail to adapt risk falling behind. The path forward is clear: invest in identity solutions that bridge the gaps between devices, platforms, and channels, providing a full view of the customer. The future of marketing belongs to those who can manage identity in a fragmented world—and those who can’t will struggle to stay relevant. 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