For years, the advertising world braced for the “cookie apocalypse.” Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox blocked third-party cookies long ago, and Google promised to follow suit in Chrome. Brands, agencies, and publishers prepared for the end of cross-site tracking. Then in April 2025, the UK Competition and Markets Authority confirmed that Google had restated its intention not to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome after all. The World Federation of Advertisers called it one of the biggest U-turns in digital advertising.
What might sound like a reprieve is really a turning point. The old playbook of leaning on third-party cookies is too fragile to survive. Consumer expectations, regulations, and platform rules have already moved on. Even if cookies linger inside Chrome, marketers are rebuilding their strategies around first-party data, clean rooms, contextual targeting, and most importantly artificial intelligence. AI has become the infrastructure that makes sense of fragmented signals and powers personalization without relying on universal identifiers.
The regulatory pressure is undeniable. India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act requires explicit consent for collecting and processing personal information, while Europe’s GDPR and California’s CCPA continue to impose strict compliance requirements. Brands that once relied on tracking scripts running silently in the background are now forced to ask for consent and show accountability. The focus has shifted from covert surveillance to declared relationships. AI is becoming the engine that turns those smaller but richer datasets into usable insights.
Marketers are pouring resources into building direct connections. Loyalty programs, gated content, app logins, and digital wallets are creating new streams of first-party data. E-commerce platforms in India are using AI recommendation engines trained on logged-in behavior rather than anonymous cookie trails. Banks are experimenting with consent-led personalization, where transaction data and mobile app usage patterns feed machine learning models that predict intent.
Identity resolution has emerged as one of the hardest puzzles. Without cookies to tie journeys together, brands must stitch profiles from email addresses, phone numbers, and behavioral signals. Deterministic matching only works when users are logged in, which leaves huge gaps. AI models are being deployed to probabilistically connect the dots, deduplicate records, and build dynamic identity graphs. Global players like Adobe and Salesforce have embedded such engines inside their customer data platforms. Indian startups are offering similar solutions for BFSI and retail clients.
Measurement and attribution are equally unsettled. The multi-touch attribution models that once assigned credit across cookie-tracked journeys are breaking down. Instead, advertisers are leaning on AI-driven probabilistic models, incrementality testing, and media mix modeling. According to GroupM, nearly 70 percent of global advertising revenue in 2024 was already AI-enabled, showing that machine learning is no longer an experimental layer but the core of campaign planning and reporting. Marketers in retail and consumer tech are now treating AI models as the arbiters of budget allocation and performance tracking.
One unexpected revival has been contextual advertising. Matching ads to the content being consumed rather than to the user was once seen as outdated. Modern AI has transformed it into a precision tool. Natural language models can analyze sentiment, intent, and cultural cues in real time. Indian OTT platforms are testing mood-based ad placement, while global verification firms have built AI engines that protect brand safety while preserving relevance.
Clean rooms and federated learning are also gaining ground. These technologies allow brands and publishers to generate insights without exposing raw data. Reliance Jio is said to be exploring such partnerships with advertisers, while Amazon and Google are already expanding clean room services globally. AI enables these environments to deliver aggregate insights without violating privacy laws, a balance that has become essential in India’s regulatory climate.
The debate is not over whether AI will dominate the post-cookie era, but how transparent and accountable it will be. Legal experts warn that anonymized datasets can still be vulnerable to re-identification when combined with AI, creating fresh risks. Regulators are keeping a close eye on whether AI-based profiling respects the spirit as well as the letter of privacy laws.
Yet the direction is clear. The cookie may still be alive inside Chrome, but the industry has already outgrown it. The real shift is psychological. Marketers no longer assume that one universal tracker can tie everything together. They are learning to operate with consented data, probabilistic insights, and model-driven decision making. Artificial intelligence has become the new default currency of digital marketing, powering everything from identity resolution to creative optimization.
The death of the cookie was supposed to be a cliff edge. Instead it has turned into a gradual handover, with AI quietly taking the driver’s seat. For brands, the lesson is simple. Waiting for Google’s final word is no longer a strategy. Building an AI-first marketing stack is the only way to stay relevant in a privacy-first world.