Cookies are Here to Stay: What It Means for Marketers and Why Zeta Remains a Step Ahead

Editor’s note: This article originally published in July 2024. This version has been updated with the latest guidance.

In April 2025, Google confirmed that it will not phase out third-party cookies in Chrome as previously planned. Instead, the company will maintain its current model, allowing users to manage cookie preferences through Privacy and Security Settings.

This move reflects evolving industry dynamics, including the rise of AI-powered privacy technologies, increased regulatory scrutiny, and broad feedback from developers, advertisers, and regulators. While the Privacy Sandbox initiative continues, its role is shifting.

For marketers, the takeaway is clear: durable identity solutions and people-based data strategies remain essential in a landscape where cookie reliance may diminish, but privacy-first innovation is accelerating. 

What Keeping Third-Party Cookies Means for Marketers

Marketers shouldn’t interpret Google’s latest decision as a signal to relax. Even if third-party cookies remain in Chrome, their utility continues to erode. Users can disable them at any time, which fragments the available signal pool and reduces targeting and measurement fidelity.

More critically, third-party cookies are already non-functional in major browsers like Safari and Firefox. Depending on them leaves major blind spots in cross-channel strategies. 

That’s why doubling down on first-party data and privacy-compliant identity solutions is not optional, it’s foundational. Marketers need stable, consent-driven identifiers that work across all environments. First-party data offers that resilience, especially when enriched through partnerships and paired with persistent ID frameworks that span web, app, and CTV.

Building strategies around authenticated experiences, probabilistic models, and durable IDs ensures continuity, even as the ecosystem continues shifting toward user choice and regulatory oversight. 

A Focused Future-Ready Strategy

While Google’s decision may have alleviated immediate pressure, the future of digital marketing is heading towards a privacy-first model. Zeta’s closed-loop, people-based measurement approach delivers the industry’s highest ROI and helps marketers maintain high-fidelity addressability and measurement, whether cookies remain or not. 

How Zeta is Helping Marketers Stay Ahead

• Super Graph: Zeta’s proprietary identity resolution engine resolves over 40% of anonymous web traffic into persistent, deterministic Zeta IDs, providing high-fidelity addressability for audiences, targeting, and measurement. It combines Zeta’s consented data assets with key industry partners to reach more than 240 million U.S. adults.
• Integrated identity resolution: Zeta integrates identity resolution into every aspect of the platform, creating maximum durability, redundancy, precision, and scale, with 80% of sources derived from Zeta’s technology assets.
• Addressability on a spectrum: Different use cases require differing levels of scale, precision, and addressability. Zeta’s proprietary assets and federated partners unlock industry-leading addressability across the spectrum, from probabilistic to deterministic needs.
• Enhanced Intender Audiences: Zeta is improving its proprietary Intender Audiences with Generative AI-enabled updates for more granular scoring and sentiment analysis, allowing for more precise targeting and engagement to boost ROI.

Looking Ahead

This all shows that nothing is certain, and staying ahead requires more than just reacting to changes; it means anticipating them and being prepared with the right tools and strategies.

With Zeta’s expertise and technology, marketers can confidently move forward and remain competitive in a privacy-focused world.