Inuvo’s Reaction to Google? Cookies Are Still Crumbling

Richard Howe, chairman and CEO of Inuvo Inc., at the company’s headquarters in downtown Little Rock. (Steve Lewis)

When Inuvo Inc. spoke out last week about Google’s turnabout decision to continue to allow advertising cookies on its web browser, one purpose was soothing investors’ concerns.

After all, the Little Rock advertising technology company (NYSE American: INUV) built its business on the theory that consumer tracking technologies like third-party cookies had outlived their usefulness. And company CEO Rich Howe told Arkansas Business on July 26 that the premise still holds true.

“We put [the news release] out to satisfy investors and to educate,” Howe said. “Part of our mission as a company is that we believe in customer privacy. We believe customers should not be tracked around the internet, and we believe the days of doing that are over. The announcement by Google, in spite of the fact that it sounds like cookies aren’t being deprecated, in fact the opposite is true.”

Inuvo’s July 24 release referred to Google’s July 22 update on its “Privacy Sandbox,” an alternative to cookies that has not worked as well as the developers hoped. Google’s statement, on a company blog, made big headlines in the advertising and technology world.

“While short on details, the [Google] blog made several important statements which are telling of the future,” Inuvo’s release said. It noted that Google expects the Privacy Sandbox to continue improving, and that it will still likely be an important alternative approach.

Cookie-Free Apple

Google also plans to give consumers a choice to opt out of being tracked by third-party cookies. When Apple gave consumers that option in 2021, more than 90% said they didn’t want to be tracked, “effectively ending such practice on IOS devices,” Inuvo said.

“Irrespective of Google’s plans, the die was cast on third-party browser cookies when Apple, with now 55% of the mobile U.S. browser market, eliminated them entirely in 2020,” Howe stated.

Consumers clearly don’t want to be tracked, Howe told Arkansas Business. And internet users are embracing tools to prevent it. The public reaction to Google’s announcement was skewed, Howe said, and Inuvo felt compelled to set the record straight.

“When a company like Google comes out with a statement and they don’t say a lot about the context, people can misinterpret it,” Howe said. “In this case, a lot of our shareholders and frankly, the whole industry, read that as cookies aren’t going away. That solicited a lot of calls from our constituents, and so we did it [put out the release].

“No one was trying to spread misinformation, Howe said, but Google’s statement was “probably overhyped to the detriment of the truth.” Google has an “infinitely difficult job” as the biggest advertising platform in the world, Howe said, trying to appease “hundreds and hundreds of companies who are dependent on this old way of doing things.”

Viewers’ Choice

Howe surmised that Google found that it couldn’t go through with its longtime plan to fully eliminate third-party cookies. “So maybe the better solution is just to allow consumers themselves to decide, and to give them the ability to do that more overtly than we have in the past.”

Google built the Privacy Sandbox as a replacement for third-party cookies because the ad industry demands a means to continue targeting likely amenable customers for their goods and services. “That’s what the Privacy Sandbox is, their alternative, which is not performing well, by their own admission.”

Howe expects Google’s announcement to actually accelerate the demise of third-party cookies, despite the general reaction from the public and the news media. That’s because consumers, given the choice, will reject being tracked.

“When Apple gave consumers the choice, the answer was overwhelmingly no, I don’t want to be tracked around the internet,” Howe said. “I think Google is going to do something similar, and that’s going to be the outcome, and then the cookie is going to be dead.”

He said that already, close to 70% of media transactions don’t involve third-party cookies.

Consumers value their privacy, he said, and Inuvo exists to honor that interest, Howe said. He predicted that companies’ demand for Inuvo’s approach to online advertising will only increase.

Inuvo’s IntentKey technology is the first large-language generative artificial intelligence solution able to identify and target ad audiences without tracking customers or using their data or cookies.

Howe said that in head-to-head tests, IntentKey has routinely beaten top-performing cookie-based targeting methods by wide margins. “It was designed from the onset to beat any comparable capability regardless of whether cookies deprecate.”

How IntentKey Works

IntentKey reads everything on the internet to deduce why someone might be viewing particular web content. Then it places ads by applying “the collective wisdom of humanity as seen on the internet,” as Howe put it.

IntentKey continuously reads all the data out there, mapping topics and their relationships. Then it uses that analysis to place ads. The technology, large language-based AI, sifts through masses of written language and textual data, then interprets them with deep-learning algorithms. It puts effective ads in front of web users without ever knowing or caring who they are, Howe said. Inuvo seeks “why, not who,” he said.

The company has about 100 employees at its Little Rock headquarters, in San Jose, California, and elsewhere, Howe said.

“We believe consumers should not be tracked, and that the days of doing that are over,” he said last week. “It just seems to us like it’s inevitable. And this particular announcement by Google, in spite of the fact that it sounds like cookies aren’t being deprecated. In fact, it’s the opposite.

“When consumers get the chance to consent or decline, they will deprecate cookies faster than Google ever could have themselves.”