Why Ad-Targeting Stocks Crashed Today

Shares of many companies that specialize in targeted online advertising stumbled and fell on Wednesday. Ad-buying platform giant The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD) dropped 12.8%, sell-side specialist Magnite (NASDAQ: MGNI) sank 12.8%, and ad retargeting expert Criteo (NASDAQ: CRTO) slumped 1.6%.

Besides getting swept up in a marketwide retreat from skyrocketing growth stocks, these companies' shares also reacted to some news from online advertising titan Google, a unit of Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL). Alphabet's stock fell more than 2%.

Ad-targeting companies such as Criteo, The Trade Desk, and Magnite rely on so-called third-party browser cookies for their data gathering and organization efforts, particularly when ad campaigns are shaped around the specific browsing behavior of specific web users. When Google said that third-party cookies are going away someday soon, that was a tough blow for the ad-targeting industry. Today, Big G took the next step of promising to make it harder to replace cookies with alternative user-tracking technologies.

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Source Fool.com