As Google pivots on cookies again, we’re staying our course
After five years of machinations on its commitment to cookie deprecation, Google now is reported to be abandoning the effort indefinitely in favor of “maintaining the status quo and allowing users to manage cookies through existing privacy settings.” 1
Over the past five years –shaped in large part by Google’s missives –brands, agencies, publishers, and the broader ad tech ecosystem have invested massive time and expense building and testing alternatives to mitigate for a world without 3rd party cookies. Bombora has been no different. In retrospect, it could be tempting to imagine all the other opportunities our ecosystem could have pursued had we not been focused on 3rd party cookies. I for one do not regret our efforts for a moment. Exploring and building beyond cookies has made Bombora’s industry-leading offering even stronger. Sometimes uncertainty and discomfort are the catalyst for great outcomes.
Bombora’s investment in expanding our identity graph and digital audiences to include alternative identifiers including authenticated IDs, Mobile Ad IDs (MAIDs), Unified ID 2.0 (UID2), Ramp ID, and CTV IDs is another demonstration of our commitment to making our B2B data available everywhere our customers want to use it. Like most, our identity strategies also continued to include the cookie, and will continue to do so. Regardless of the future of cookies, however, alternative identifiers offer the critical advantage of enabling scale and reach across all advertising channels, browsers, and platforms –including Connected TV (CTV), which is becoming increasingly important to B2B advertisers. Because of our investment, Bombora has an average of 3 times the scale of other B2B digital audience providers on a given DSP. The ubiquity of our data allows advertisers to activate truly connected campaigns.
For some, the news Google will continue to support cookies feels like a reprieve. The reality is that many individuals are already taking online privacy into their own hands. A 2025 report noted that 76% of surveyed adults know how to clear and disable cookies and 37% reject some or all cookies.2 Additionally, the regulatory environment is not guaranteed, making a sole reliance on cookies to derive domain identity unwise. Further reason why we’re confident we made a great investment.
As the B2B data pioneer, Bombora will continue innovating to set our customers up for success — no matter where the future leads. We’re committed to increasing our deployability and making it easy to integrate and activate our data across the ecosystem of marketing, sales, and advertising platforms. Want to learn more? Reach out here.