Google is clarifying its plans for targeted advertising as it eliminates the use of browser cookies, saying in a new blog post on Wednesday that it will not use other ways to “track” users over the internet after it finishes supporting cookies. in Chrome.
Last year, the company said it would end support for third-party cookies, which feed much of the digital advertising ecosystem, on its Chrome browser within two years from January 2020. Instead, Google says it will use only ” privacy preservation technologies “that rely on methods like anonymity or data aggregation.
The blog post by David Temkin, director of product management for ad privacy and trust, says the company has been asking questions about whether Google “will join others in the advertising technology industry who plan to replace third-party cookies with identifiers. user-level alternatives. “Ad technology participants have been working on ways of marketing that balance consumer privacy while maintaining personalized advertising after they can no longer use cookies.
“Today, we are making it explicit that, once third-party cookies are eliminated, we will not build alternative identifiers to track individuals while surfing the web, nor will we use them in our products,” says the Google post.
Cookies are small codes that websites provide to the visitor’s browser and remain as long as the person visits other websites. They can be used to track users across multiple sites, to target ads and see how they work. Google said last year that it would end support for these cookies in Chrome as soon as it figured out how to meet the needs of users, publishers and advertisers and came up with tools to mitigate alternative solutions. The company said its intention was to do this in two years, by the beginning of 2022.
To do this, Google launched its “Privacy Sandbox” initiative to find a solution that protects user privacy and allows content to remain available for free on the open web. In January, Google said it was “extremely confident” about the progress of its proposals to replace cookies and plans to start testing a proposal with advertisers on Google Ads in the next quarter. This particular proposal, called “Federated cohort learning”, would basically put people in groups based on similar browsing behaviors, which means that only “cohort IDs” and not individual user IDs would be used to target them.
Google says this is about how their own advertising products will work, and not restrict what can happen on Chrome by third parties. The company said it would not use Unified ID 2.0 or LiveRamp ATS in its advertising products, but would not speak specifically about any initiative.
Unified ID 2.0 is an initiative in which several of the leading advertising technology companies are working together, which would depend on encrypted consumer email addresses that give their consent. The public company LiveRamp also has what it calls an “Authenticated Traffic Solution”, which claims to involve consumers choosing to gain control of their data and, on the other hand, brands and publishers can use this data.
Temkin says in the post that other providers “can offer a level of user identity for tracking web ads that we won’t offer – like PII graphics based on people’s email addresses.”
“We do not believe that these solutions will meet consumers’ growing expectations for privacy, nor will they face rapidly evolving regulatory constraints and, therefore, are not a long-term sustainable investment,” says the blog. “Instead, our web products will be powered by privacy-preserving APIs that prevent individual tracking and, at the same time, provide results for advertisers and publishers.”
Google reported the post to several major advertisers and groups before Wednesday, including George Popstefanov, founder and CEO of the digital agency PMG.
Popstefanov said in an e-mail that, although it is a dynamic change, “we have been preparing for this for some time”.
“Following last year’s announcement to eliminate third-party cookies, many of our customers are moving quickly to build their data infrastructures and invest in their CRM to better take advantage of their primary data,” he said. “The important thing is that consumer behavior is not fundamentally changing, only our ability to track and measure behaviors as we are used to. The importance of strategic planning and insights will be more important than ever to understand the audience and how to connect in the moments right and in a contextually relevant way. “
He added that he believes that Google is motivated to design its products and solutions to solve the new reality.
“Marketers are already diversifying their spending into more areas up and down the funnel, so it’s up to Google that their solutions attract brands and support the investments and impact of marketers,” he said.
Alec Stapp, director of technology policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, called Google news a step in the right direction for user privacy. The group received funding from Google and other major technology players, Protocol reported last year.
“However, companies – even very large ones – cannot do much on their own,” he said by email. “Policymakers need to intervene and formalize the rules that protect user privacy, while being careful not to bury users in an infinite series of acceptance screens.
Jon Halvorson, vice president of global consumer experience at Mondelez International, said the decision is consistent with consumer feedback on what they want and expect. He said the company will run some tests on “FLoC” and include them in the business plans for this year.
“We don’t think it can be privacy or performance, advertisers need and demand both,” he said in an email.