What Google Chrome third party Cookie removal means for affiliate marketers
Did you know that third party cookies will be removed within 2022 from the Google Chrome Algorithm? That means between 50- 70% of the web usage will be affected.
So what does this actually mean for you as an affiliatemarketer?
The third party cookies will soon be history and replaced by browser based tools .
Why? you may ask.
Well Google seems to think that this will give you more privacy according to the GDPR rules and be better for personalisation.
What does a third party cookie do?
A browser cookie is a file filled with tons of information stored on your computer or browser.
It makes your browser a bit slower.
Third party cookies are for marketers most used to advertise to you.
The cookie basically follows your moves around on a site or on the internet and collects data about you and what you do. So, if you look at a picture of a nice house you want to buy or a new car these pictures will follow you for weeks later.
Some browsers let others read their information and these are what is basically called a Third Party Cookie.
Adsense and Amazon uses third party cookies as part of their marketing strategy to be able to target users with specific ads that can be interesting for the users.
Example. you are on the internet looking for a product, The cookie collect data about your moves. If you then go to Amazon who use third party cookies you will probably see suggestions of products presented to you based on your recent behaviour on the net.
Amazon read the information from other browsers that you have installed on your website and use it to target you with ads thry believe is relevant based on your recent behaviour.
Safari have already limited the use of third party cookies and Mozilla have already completely blocked them while Google, Facebook and Amazon rely heavily on third party cookies.
The impact of the removal
The removal of third party cookies from browsers online will definitely lead to less revenue for those who have used this as a part of their marketing strategy unless they find another way to do things.
What is new?
Well Google have decided to remove third party cookies and replace them with AI driven solutions instead. Federated Learning of Cohort or FLOC as they call it.
Artificial Intelligent systems that learn on their own can be great to give you what you want when you need it based on your activity. This will give Google much more control than before.
A system that is learning by itself is also more difficult to control.
Google can give the systems initial tasks to perform and the AI system will learn over time how to optimize that task. But how do they control the development?
Let us say Google gives it a task to generate as much money as possible on organic SEO. The system will then figure out, optimize and learn what to do over time to make that happen. Sounds good?
Yes but it also raises a lot of new questions....
Some New Questions
This of course raise many new questions like how are Google going to control this learning?
How will these categories or cohorts work? How well can Google pinpoint you with ads now?
Will they use subcohorts as well? How will it stereotype people?
How sensitive are these systems to peoples privacy? Will there really be more Privacy?
How does it relate to sensitive information categories?
What will happen with all the companies that before relied on third party cookies?
Will they create their own AI algorithms?
And much more......
Only Time will tell....
But the most interesting Question for me personally and maybe for you too is what does it have to say for me as an affiliate?
What it means for Affiliate marketers (you)
Instead of tracking cookies we track cohorts (crowds, groups, categories) now.
It means we must do things in a different way than before.
As affiliate marketers we are used to earn commissions based on First party cookies that are being tracked. That has not changed.
The cookies have had different length like 10 days, 30 days, 90 days etc. That is why you get your own Affiliate link with a tracking code.
If the individual who clicked on your link sign up to a program you promote within the cookie period you get a sale and a commission.
The best thing we can do is to ensure ourselves that our affiliate programs does not operate on a third party cookie tracker platform and is not on any blacklists.
As far as I have understood it -
The first party cookies will not be affected by this new changes.
First party cookies are used to track movements on your website and store passwords.
If someone visit my website and move from page to page this will be tracked by the first party cookie.
Will it affect my commissions?
I know many are worried if their commissions will be affected.
In hindsight I can now understand why Amazon have slashed their commissions to a minimum lately.
They knew this was coming I guess. I have also noticed a few other affiliatepartners have slashed their commissions. I suspect it is for the same reasons.
But generally It does not seem like it will make a big difference for affiliatemarketers unless you have relied heavily on third party cookie marketing.
How will it affect affiliate programs?
It will of course change the way they collect data and they will need to adjust to the new changes.
Marketing changes
As far as I can see the way some marketers have been used to target customers will change.
I am sure that it will come up new solutions and tools to get around this quite soon.
AI based solutions will be more relevant to use.
Another turn is that it may lead to more competition in the SEO market and higher prices if marketers shift to more organic traffic.
I also heard that advertisers could start to make private deals with affiliatemaraketers who have a lot of organic traffic to reach their target groups better.
What do you think will change most for Affiliate marketers? Would love to hear your outlook on this.
Recent Comments
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wow, I actually managed to read all that pretty quickly - very informative 👍
As long as we can still function as online marketers and get all the help we need to navigate all the algorithms changes, we will be ready even if the changes are annoying
There is a lot happening on visitor tracking due to privacy laws development. It is hard to understand how it works right now and even harder to imagine what will be after the changes Apple, Facebook, Google and the likes are going to change and implement. I trust these companies will protect their income streams by facilitating the advertisers the best they can. For me it means wait, see and react accordingly.
That is true Jack. I think we will see a lot happening on the mobile/App front regarding this. You are right. We need to keep our eyes and ears open.
Thank you for sharing this information, Hilde. I knew nothing about it. I just recently learned about the use of cookies within affiliate marketing.
It looks like whatever was true before is going to change. I'm not sure though if you are saying the change is bad for all affiliate marketers or just bad for those who rely heavily on third party cookies.
Lynn
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Speaking at an employee of the largest affiliate network in the world, this isn't a surprise to us and we've been working on technologies to address it since forever. We've already introduced bounceless tracking to handle this challenge.
One other great thing about affiliate marketing is that it is extremely data-lite, and we can easily justify the need for any data collected. That's made things a whole lot easier for our industry as well.
Good to know Jeannine. I am sure you are constantly on this matter.
Yup, we must be on top of everything involved in tracking. As a network, it's our most important job and we take that responsibility very seriously.