In January 2024, I wrote about removing all advertising cookies and user tracking from sentry.io. It was eight months into the decision at the time, and we were still figuring out what broke and what surprised us. That post struck a nerve: it became one of the most-read things we’ve ever published, probably because everyone building or running a product on the web was watching the same cookie deprecation timeline and wondering what would actually happen if someone just ripped the bandaid off.
It’s been over two years now. We never put the cookies back (also never planned to). And the way we spend our growth budget has changed pretty dramatically as a result. Not because we planned some grand strategy from the start, but because removing cookies forced us to rethink where we put our money, and what we actually expected it to do. Roughly 70% of our growth budget now goes to awareness. Here’s a sample of what that actually looks like:
We signed a multi-year deal with the Golden State Warriors, Valkyries, and Chase Center.
Syntax.fm became part of Sentry in 2023 rather than starting our own corporate podcast.
We spend a decent amount on billboards and OOH every year.
