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Google said Monday that new test results show promising signs that the technology it hopes will replace cookie-based ad targeting is working.
Why is this important: Google and web browser rivals Apple and Mozilla have all recently introduced sweeping privacy changes that will collectively eliminate cookies, an internet tracking tool that tracks users’ web browsing history.
Catch up quickly: Cookies are considered third party data or user data that is collected indirectly from users through browsers or websites. Third party data is often bought and sold on a large scale through online data exchanges.
- For decades, cookies have been the primary way for most advertisers to target online users, but privacy concerns make them less viable in the future.
- Finding a replacement for cookies is a tall order, given that the entire US $ 330 billion digital advertising ecosystem around the world has been mostly built around cookies.
Details: Google has tested a new API (a software interface) called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) which acts as an effective surrogate signal for third-party cookies. The API exists as a browser extension in Google Chrome.
- The company said Monday that tests of FLoC to reach the public show that advertisers can expect to see at least 95% of conversions per dollar spent on ads compared to cookie-based advertising.
- FLoC uses machine learning algorithms to analyze user data and then create a group of thousands of people based on the sites a person visits. Data collected locally from the browser is never shared. Instead, data from the much larger cohort of thousands of people is shared and then used to target ads.
Be smart: It’s a big deal that Google says it’s about to come up with technology that will replace cookies, because one of the hardest parts of phasing out cookies from internet targeting advertising is that it there was no ideal solution to replace them. with.
- Many publishers have started using proprietary data, or data uploaded to a site directly by the user, to target ads instead.
- But not all publishers have strong enough customer relationships to collect such data, and would have been crippled without the ability to use some sort of anatomized data to target people with ads.
- This effort is part of a larger Google initiative called ‘Privacy Sandbox’, a set of rules proposed to phase out cookies in a privacy-friendly way, in conjunction with an industry consultation .
The big picture: Google’s privacy efforts are occurring alongside Apple’s sweeping changes that are also making it more difficult to track individual user data online. These major changes come as part of a calculation of privacy in the United States and Europe on online data.
- Google is trying to implement a more gradual and collaborative approach to its privacy changes than Apple, which has been criticized – primarily by Facebook – for rolling out sweeping changes to its “Identifier for Advertisers” (IDFA) user tracking feature. ) without offering advertisers a better alternative.
- Chetna Bindra, Google’s user trust and privacy manager for advertising, told Axios that an innovative approach in the industry made more sense for Google.
- “The way we look at it is that there are a lot of technical innovations at the heart of it all, and what we are focusing on is not blocking third-party cookies right away,” he said. she declared. “We intend to engage the entire advertising community and really dig into the kind of collaboration that’s essential to make such massive change.”
And after: Google has other proposals to replace cookies in the works, so there’s no guarantee FLoC will be the answer, but the company said it was very encouraged by what it has seen so far.
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