Important information regarding the new Google Chrome update (v80), which might impact the way your digital marketing tools work

On February 4th Google released a new version of their Google Chrome browser, which accounts for more than 60% of the global desktop internet browser market share. This update incorporates fundamental changes to the way Chrome handles tracking cookies and goes in line with Google's plan to end support for third-party cookies within the next couple of years, in response to an increased user demand for privacy and online security.

At The Cocktail we wanted to break down the relevant information regarding this update to help you contextualize it within the current marketing tech ecosystem.

What are cookies?

Cookies are a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in the user’s web browser while the user is browsing, so that the site is able to refer back to previous user activity on that browser. All browsers let users check what information websites have been storing. You can find them in Google Chrome via the Applications tab on Chrome DevTools, and then selecting Cookies, where you’ll find them broken down inside of a table.

Every cookie has four fundamental properties: name, value, domain and expiration date (which specifies when the cookie will cease to exist). For each cookie you can also define additional configuration values, which are the ones being impacted by this new version of Chrome. The ones we are looking at today are in the ‘Secure’ (which determines whether the cookie originates from a server tagged with a secure protocol) and ‘SameSite’ (which adds an extra layer of safety) columns.

First party vs Third party

The domain cookie property is particularly important. Domains can be:

First-party (associated to the website storing the cookies)

Third-party (associated to other domains/websites).

Changes in the latest Google Chrome release

Until last Monday February 4th, Chrome allowed sites to store any type of cookies (first or third-party) in its browser. From v80 published on Monday onwards, third-party cookies will have to specify “Secure” and “SameSite” values, the two additional parameters that used to be optional.

Who might be impacted by the new release?

From now on, any digital marketing, personalization, analytics or heat-mapping tools operating on your sites via third-party cookies will need to review their source code to ensure their cookies include the additional security parameters required by Chrome. If third parties fail to do this, their cookies will be rejected by the browser, and there is a risk that any processes, analyses or audiences that depend on these cookies will be impacted.

To learn more

At The Cocktail we recommend that you keep a close eye on your tracked data (analytics, audiences, etc.) in the next few days while the new update rolls out across user’s browsers. You should also:

1) Check yourself whether your third-party cookies show values on the "Secure" and "SameSite" parameters, and chase providers if not.

2) If you are using cookies for DV360 that have not implemented these parameters, your programmatic inventory might be impacted.

Google Chrome Developers announcement video

¿Do you need help?

We will of course be available to help out with any questions you might have!