Nano has released a new report: ID versus ID-Free – advertising at a crossroads.

In this whitepaper, we look beyond the next big deadline for the adtech industry – Google’s Chrome cookie deprecation. If this is currently scheduled to happen in the first half of 2025, what’s next after that?

  • Which signal will Google/Apple target next – IP addresses, or even post-cookie IDs?
  • Can you put a cost on maintaining people-based data in the face of signal loss?
  • What is the take-up of ID solutions, and what – if anything – are the alternatives?

Featuring a wide selection of data, expert quotes & infographics – register to download the report in full here, or read an excerpt below:

Advertising – and by extension, media in general – is at a crossroads. Cookies are on the way out, even if delays give us few extra months to be ready. Decision time for targeting and measurement.

Choices and investment made now will arguably impact well into the future. In many regions, Chrome covers half to as much as two-thirds of the online population, and with its cookie shut-off deadline delayed, complacency is inevitable.

Which is not the same as saying it is merited – planning alternative approaches beyond cookies could not be more important. To help clients navigate the options currently available, Nano has put together this whitepaper.

Setting the Scene – Cookies or Wider Signal Loss?

For people-based identifiers, the writing’s been on the wall. Arguably since GDPR kickstarted the process, legislation which would be replicated in many other regions.

Chrome cookie phase-out has seen a number of delays, but experts warn these are only temporary. And let’s not forget that Apple’s Safari browser retired third-party cookies all the way back in 2020. Ever since, it had been widely rumoured that bidders were simply over-indexing to Google’s browser to maintain addressability, while largely ignoring Apple users among others. Advertising and ad tech are nothing if not creative with solutions.

But being inventive with the truth needs calling out. At the same time as cookies were waning, we also saw the rise of the alternative ID or post-cookie identity solution. By and large, the actual token replacing the cookie here is the individual user’s email address or mobile number. For businesses, this arguably represented a big step forward in addressability and accuracy. But questions lingered from their inception – and persist on a few fronts.

First, around consent and user buy-in – if, as Nano’s research has found, 70% of the population is already voting with their feet on opting out of cookies, how many would do the same here if informed on how the IDs actually work? Another survey told us as many as 49% would be even more likely to mask their personal data were email or mobile identifiers involved.

Perhaps more pressing than public relations or even legislative questions – how will tech gatekeepers react once these new solutions are more widely known? Especially worth considering here is that the cookie – fairly anonymous compared to a personal
email address – is already considered a privacy risk when used in profiling and people-based targeting.

Register to download the report in full here.