The death of the third-party cookie has been announced so many times that the industry has largely stopped worrying about it. That is a mistake.
What is changing is not just a technical identifier. It is an entire model for how digital advertising has operated for 25 years — the ability to follow users across the web, build behavioral profiles without direct relationships, and retarget at scale with minimal consent. That model is structurally broken, regardless of what Google ultimately does with Chrome.
Here is what I see in practice across brands I have worked with and observed:
**Most "first-party data strategies" are actually CRM lists with ambitions.** Having email addresses is not a first-party data strategy. A first-party data strategy is a systematic approach to building direct digital relationships with customers that generates behaviorally rich, consent-based data at meaningful scale. Very few brands have this.
**The consent layer is ignored until it becomes a crisis.** GDPR and equivalent regulations have existed long enough that compliance should be standard. Yet I still regularly encounter opt-in rates below 15% because consent mechanisms are designed to discourage consent rather than earn it. A properly designed consent experience, paired with genuine value exchange, routinely produces opt-in rates 3x higher. The business case is there. The organizational will often is not.
**CDPs are being purchased before the data problem is understood.** A Customer Data Platform is a tool for activating clean, structured first-party data. It is not a solution for creating it. Brands that invest in CDP infrastructure before solving the data collection, governance, and enrichment problem are building expensive empty warehouses.
The marketers who are navigating this well are treating first-party data as a long-term brand asset — building consent-based relationships one touchpoint at a time, rather than looking for a technical shortcut that recreates third-party tracking in a different form.
Personal views only. Not professional advice.