Google is phasing out third-party cookies... Will it impact hotel marketing?
10 experts shared their view
Google recently announced that they are going forward with their plan to block third-party cookie tracking through Google Chrome (Chrome commands 63% of browser market share). What this means exactly for hotels is not totally clear. Mostly what will be affecting is tracking the source of revenue on a hotel's website (also called attribution) and the possibility to re-target visitors to your website (unless you use Google's retargeting ad products). To avoid users getting hit with totally irrelevant ads, like billboards on the highway, Google is creating a new system to target users which involves less tracking. Called FLoC the system essentially groups people into categories based on their behavior and puts a label on top so they can get served ads based on those labels without having any personal information connected. However, it only works if you advertise with Google, which means they are building a taller wall around their garden - an odd choice as they enter a long anti-trust investigation process. But what does this mean for hotel marketing? How will hotels track revenue? Since most non-major brand hotels have two domains (website + booking engine) how will this affect tracking?
To add some context: 42.7% of internet users worldwide (16-64 years old) use ad-blocking tools at least once a month (source: Hootsuite). When Google announced their intention to stop third-party cooking tracking on its Chrome browser by 2022, other browsers like Safari and Firefox already made that change years ago.
However, Google does provide easy-to-use controls in a user's Data & Personalisation settings to turn off ad personalisation, activity tracking, and delete the data Google has collected about you.
Understandably, as the public become more aware of privacy issues, regulators will continue to pass more and more privacy laws - in a never-ending cycle of trust and mistrust.
Hotel marketers should consider Google Hotel Ads within the context of a growing proportion of users adopting tools to avoid or eliminate online ads. Google Hotel Ads are a good option to consider because the internet user is actively researching a hotel product within this Google advertising platform and not likely to be offended by a timely Ad.