The Post-Cookie Future

The ad industry is scrambling to track users without third-party cookies. Google's Privacy Sandbox tried to keep your data inside the browser while still serving targeted ads through group-based profiling — but critics warned it merely shifted tracking to Google itself, and the company shut the project down in 2025.

Contextual advertising offers a genuine alternative: ads based on the page content rather than your profile. Reading about hiking means seeing hiking-gear ads without anyone tracking you. Another rising tactic is server-side tracking, where sites send data straight to ad servers, bypassing browser privacy protections.