The Stack: Google’s Cookie U-Turn; Latest Company Earnings

by Aimee Newell Tarín on 26th Jul 2024 in News

This week on The Stack: Google’s Cookie U-Turn; Latest Company Earnings; Amazon Prime Day Breaks Records; Today’s MadTech Daily Podcast

The biggest industry news this week was, of course, Google’s cookie U-turn. Google announced that finally, it will not be deprecating third-party cookies on its Chrome browser, putting an end to years of uncertainty for the ad tech sector. A blog post by Anthony Chavez, vice-president of Privacy Sandbox briefly outlined Google’s new plan. On ExchangeWire, we gathered industry experts for their take on what the industry should do next following the news. Additionally, an opinion piece by Mat Broughton looked at how the cookie still lives, but the pie is getting smaller.

This week also saw the release of many companies’ latest earnings figures. The BBC’s dipped due to big expenditures such as its acquisition of BitBox International. Things were looking up for Spotify, which posted a record net profit of £230m for Q2. Its ad supported revenue increased by 13%, with double-digit growth in all regions. YouTube had some staggering figures to share: the video giant earned a total of £6.7bn in advertising revenue during Q2.

Flipping to the consumer side, we saw Amazon achieve a record spend from Amazon Prime Day. Across both days, US consumers spent a total of USD $14.2bn (£11bn), while total consumer spend in the UK reached £1.3bn.