Google To Replace Advertising Tracking Cookies In Future: Testing Begins

The web will (in the foreseeable future) completely do without advertising cookies. Google has now started testing an alternative that should ultimately bring benefits for everyone involved.

As the company announced, registered developers can now experiment with the API for the so-called trust tokens. This is a process whereby advertisers continue to receive certain information in order to be able to place target group-oriented ads. However, it should no longer be possible to track the usage behavior of individual users. In addition, a distinction can be made between real users and bots.

Google has been developing the trust tokens for some time. What is now made available to the developers for the first tests should only be the current state of affairs and is not guaranteed to be final. The responsible people at Google already emphasized that there will be a lot more to see in the near future, which is currently still in internal development.

Business model under attack

The background to Google’s initiative is the long-standing dispute over third-party cookies, which are mainly scattered across numerous websites by the advertising industry. As these are also used to track users across different pages, they are a thorn in the side of data protection and it is foreseeable that the regulations on the handling of these cookies will be tightened further and further.

It is particularly important for Google to adjust to this. After all, the group is the largest advertising marketer on the web and almost all of the group’s sales depend on the fact that further ads can be displayed. Of course, the best way to ensure this is to develop alternative processes instead of just reacting. Google’s goal now is to completely overcome third-party cookies by 2022.