The Winners and Losers of Google’s Big Cookie Reversal

Google on Tuesday said it will keep cookies in their current form in its Chrome browser, and will walk back a previous commitment to build a simple opt-out tool for users who don’t wish to be tracked. 

The digital ad ecosystem—which has invested significant resources and manpower to develop cookieless ways to track and target audiences and measure media performance—responded with a mix of shock, exasperation, and relief. 

Google’s stock price, meanwhile, spiked about 3.8% on the back of the news.

Here are the winners and losers of Google’s cookie reversal, according to ad industry insiders and analysts.

The Winners

The Trade Desk, LiveRamp, and Yahoo

Organizations that use cookies but have also dedicated resources to develop alternative approaches, like cookieless ID solutions, are poised to capitalize on Google’s new stance. 

Within that cohort, The Trade Desk may be particularly well-positioned thanks to its popular identifier, Unified ID 2.0, which has become a valuable tool for targeting audiences on the open web. CEO Jeff Green said on an investor call last year the ID has “reached a critical mass of adoption.” (Although the company has stumbled this year in the wake of subpar Q4 financials and its floundering media buying platform, Kokai). 

Like The Trade Desk, LiveRamp stands to benefit thanks to its cookie-linked business and its efforts to develop a privacy-safe ID solution, RampID. 

“They’re already in the cookie-matching space,” said Ameet Shah, partner and svp of publisher operations and strategy at Prohaska Consulting. “LiveRamp’s business is still very, very solid, and when you really think of their upside potential, it’s all the relationships they’ve made over the last several years … because they’ve looked at other ways to match and link data with marketers and bring in data collaboration.”

CEO Travis Clinger is bullish on LiveRamp’s future. “Marketers need to be everywhere their customers are, and measure how those touchpoints perform. Cookies can’t do that,” he told ADWEEK. A robust omnichannel strategy, he said, demands more, requiring both “first-party data and authenticated identity.”