Mutinex APAC CEO Mat Baxter said Google’s backflip on third party cookies deprecation was inevitable once the commercial reality of switching them off had set in. He said marketers should not be concerned and continue seeking alternative independent solutions to address signal loss.
The cookiepocalypse the industry had been waiting for was suddenly halted after Google recently decided that it was not going to sunset third-party cookies after all despite several years of promising otherwise.
The news had stunned advertisers and industry leaders at the time, but not one of adland’s foremost thinkers.
Mat Baxter, the APAC CEO of marketing mix modelling company Mutinex, told B&T that he never bought Google’s overtures that the cookiapocalypse was nigh.
He said that it was never likely Google would “give up offering the drug” that provides it with a power base in the advertising community.
“I think it was disingenuous because it was never going to go away,” said Baxter a week after Mutinex launched its new chat based MMM tool Hendren. “This has been one of the most grandstanding sort of positions in the tech sector for so long. It’s not in the interest of Google to get rid of them because they create an inherent bias in the system.
“I don’t give a shit, and nor should marketers, about Google setting the agenda on signal loss or cookies. It’s not their job to do it.
“The role of a marketer, a great agency and a partner like us is that we should set that agenda and determine what is needed. We shouldn’t let the people that sell advertising tell us how to measure and ultimately intake the signals for the advertising that we’re buying. “Collectively we control the marketers budget and how they should be spending it.”
Baxter – whose company provides independent analysis about which media channels perform best – said that although Google provides a powerful and effective advertising ecosystem, marketers should seek alternative solutions to address signal loss and provide independent measurement and analysis of campaign performance.
He said that because Google is an advertising supplies and seller, its tools should not solely be relied upon to measure success, adding: “nobody should mark their own homework”.
Politics vs commercial reality
B&T asked Baxter why Google would spend years, including several false dawns, promising the market cookie deprecation it never intended to deliver it.
He said that Google’s posturing about cookies deprecation had more to do with appeasing consumers and regulators who are concerned about online tracking and privacy.
“When you get as big as Google, it is naive to think that you are not as much a political organisation as you are a commercial one,” he explained. “Google did what was politically, in my view, prudent, by making those commitments to sunset cookies. Now political prudence and commercial prudence are two entirely separate and often disconnected things.
“What you say that might be politically smart is not always what you need to say that is commercially smart.”
Other industry leaders recently speaking to B&T have also urged marketers to address signal loss irrespective of Google’s backflip.
B&T invited Google to respond to Baxter’s comments, but the tech giant did not reply at the time this article was published.
