Digital Advertising: A New Phase in Cookieless Solutions Integration
Over the summer, Google indefinitely postponed the end-of-cookies deadline, initially set for the end of 2024. Nevertheless, the rise of cookieless solutions—capable of ensuring digital advertising remains at least equally effective and addressing new challenges, such as CTV integration—has accelerated. This is reflected in the results of the Cookieless Barometer presented on October 9 by NPA Conseil, Médias Square, and Reason Why during the Future of Cookieless morning session: 92% of the 25 media owners studied have adopted at least one ID solution, and these IDs are now widely present—more so than cookies—in the requests circulating on programmatic advertising platforms. The remaining challenge for the buy side—i.e., brands—is to integrate these solutions to leverage them for campaign targeting and measurement. The Cookieless Barometer aims to provide insights to help rationalize these decisions.
Published twice a year, the Barometer provides all players in the advertising ecosystem (media owners, solution providers, SSPs, DSPs, agencies, and advertisers) with an overview of the deployment and integration of cookieless ID solutions: deployment by the sell-side; integration and activation by the buy-side.
The study employs a dual approach:
- Direct integration of market players (25 media owners, 10 ID providers, 19 SSPs, and 15 DSPs for the September 2024 wave)
- Analysis of requests collected by Media Square (over 21 billion in September 2024)
The deliverable includes a PowerPoint analysis report (67 slides), featuring three key maps (media owners x ID, SSP x ID, DSP x ID), and a 2-hour presentation workshop led by the study authors. The report for the September 2024 wave is available.
Planned enhancements for the February 2025 wave include:
- Including advertisers and agencies for a more complete view of activation and integration
- Adding new focus points: use of curation, frequency capping based on IDs rather than cookies, activation and prioritization of specific IDs in buys, solution interoperability
- Measuring cross-device capabilities (including CTV)