by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, February 5, 2020

Advertisers have become more interested in publications, rather than the audience data since Google announced the decision to stop supporting third-party cookies in its Chrome browser within two years, according to one publisher.

“The market always corrects, but at the moment we’re all in a bit of a panic mode,” said Dominic Miserandino, CEO at mid-size publisher The Inquisitr. “The market needs to recalibrate.”

Attribution, or how attribution will work without third-party cookies, is one concern of publishers in the short term, he said, as many work through changes contributed by search -- not only on Google's search engine, but searches on publisher sites.

Miserandino said the sentiment from publisher colleagues is that the market is trying to find itself.

There have been discussions among publishers about having their own cookies site-wide, he said, adding that “my hope is this will lead advertisers to make decisions on where to place ads based on the publisher.”

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Through the years the publishers' website got lost as data became more important, but this shift certainly has an upside. Google’s decision changed the focus.

“Advertisers are focusing more on the publisher and not on the data,” Miserandino said. “I feel as if the cream is rising to the top. It’s about selling advertising on the individual sites, which is a good thing.”

He said that at times the data made the publisher anonymous. Advertisers were bidding on the audience, rather than a space on the site and the specifics of the publication.

Search Marketing Daily asked Marty Kratky-Katz, cofounder and CEO at ad-blocking revenue recovery platform for publishers Blockthrough, whether ad-blocking tools will be needed in the future. He said “the changes to third-party cookies are mitigating the reasons why people were driven to ad blocking software.”

“It’s not a simple answer as to why people use ad blockers,” he said, “Privacy isn’t the top reason. If indeed the changes in Chrome address privacy then, yes, it will mitigate some reasons why people block ads.”

Solving for ads interrupting the experience -- which Google’s plans do not address -- is really Blockthrough’s focus, rather than privacy-related reasons. He said Google's decision will not change Blockthrough's business model. "I don't believe ad blocking will go to zero," he said. "As more ad blockers block accessible ads, you're seeing multiple tiers of the internet emerge in terms of monetization."

Kratky-Katz pointed to a core, traditional experience governed by the Coalition for Better Ads. People using Chrome without an ad blocker get that experience, he said. And then there's the experience through AdBlock Plus and AdBlock, which people can access through Microsoft Edge as an option in its browser.