AdForm Set To Solve The Cookie Problem With Its Proven First-Party ID Solution
Adform announced this week that advertisers can now use the first-party ID on their platform in the absence of third-party cookies. The demise of third-party cookies has been a cause of concern for all advertisers and publishers on some browsers and are looking to future-proof their offerings and tech stacks. And Adform’s success in switching to first-party data is a major breakthrough for the industry. Now, agencies can share first-party data and IDs with Adform to personalize advertising, target specific audiences, and report results – all without the use of any third-party cookies.
A joint collaboration between Adform, the European publishing group Sanoma, marketing agency Dagmar, and global group IPG MediaBrands is leading the way forward for the digital advertising industry and leveling the playing field with the walled gardens. The collaboration not only prepared for the future cookie change but also improve the functionality of advertising buying for Safari and Firefox browsers. The change in first-party data allows programmatic targeting and helps to direct advertising money into publishers’ properties who are eager to secure their ad revenue.
Adform states that without the need for hundreds of third-party cookies, compliance with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA will be easier. First-party data and IDs is beneficial to brands as they live longer than third-party cookies. With first-party IDs from publishers and advertisers, impressions and data are completely traceable increasing transparency that helps to deal with issues like discrepancies, accountability, hidden fees, arbitrage, and ad fraud and reducing the risk of data leakage.
Adform has a complete digital infrastructure and is uniquely placed to switch to first-party data with its integrated advertising platform(IAS). Jakob Bak, CTO, Adform said,
“We have proved that it is possible to switch from third-party cookies to first-party IDs and, as such, have provided a leap into the future of digital marketing. The industry is on an inevitable road to life without third-party cookies and ongoing success for the open ecosystem will depend on collaboration. So far, publisher announcements around first-party data have represented positive yet individual approaches, now it’s clear that working together presents a more powerful way to ensure profitability for independent publishers. In fact, the evidence of how impactful shared first-party IDs can be has already led to many agencies and sales houses to express interest in moving spend away from media giants.”
Jaakko Kuivalainen, Director, Digital Advertising Business, at Sanoma also commented,
“Finland is an established hotbed for innovation, but there is a huge opportunity for wider global progression. This venture is a great example of what can be achieved when publishers and technology companies come together. Working as one, we can be consistently at the forefront of industry development; and effectively preparing for the coming demise of third-party cookies with first-party centric digital advertising.”
Read more: Top 10 Emerging Indian Ad Tech Startups You Should Know About
Innovation In Google During The Tough Times Of COVID
While most of the brands are struggling to survive during the tough times of pandemic, Google has set its goals right for the whole year. It is innovating itself without any trouble. Every month Google targets to enhance itself, according to the growing demand of the society. Google makes sure, that it fulfills the need of its users by providing them with exactly what they desire.
Recently, Google introduced two new features for its search portals. One of the features is designed, and dedicated to the Black community. The feature will help in the upliftment of the community in society and will aim to end the injustice against them.
Due to the rise of anger in the community against the centuries-long injustice experienced by the community, several brands came forward to show their support towards the community. Google was amongst them.
#BlackLivesMatter!
To fulfill his promise, the CEO at Google, Sundar Pichai recently added a feature to the map and Google search listing.
This feature is launched to empower the Black community. The feature will highlight businesses owned by the Black community helping them grow. However, only those members can avail of the benefit whose business has verified profiles in the US. Also, the business must be owned by a member of the black community.
Those businesses highlighted under this feature will be marked by an image(as shown below). The symbol will signify that the business is owned by a member of the Black community.
It is said that the step was taken to provide a financial boost to the community. It is a foreseen step to finally end the orthodox discrimination towards the community. Google is also partnering with U.S. Black Chambers, inc. To provide better features like Analytics helping the businesses groom and blossom.
In a statement regarding this following statement was issued by Google:
“As part of our $300 million commitment to support under-represented entrepreneurs, we’re integrating the attribute into the digital skills training programs we offer Black business owners through Grow with Google Digital Coaches. And through Google for Startups Accelerator for Black Founders, we’re starting our work with the first cohort of 12 startups.”
Google is keen to develop the feature even more and is seeking ideas internally. According to the management, they have already received more than 500 creative ideas to get this model to develop more brilliantly.
The company is also working on better and much strict “Policies against hate and harassment”
“About this ad”- More power to the user!
With a more transparent approach towards their users, Google has launched a new feature popularly known as “About this ad”.
To implement this feature Google will be launching new tools. It will help the users gain information about the advertisement they are receiving. It will help enhance security and will increase user privacy on the digital platform.
According to Google spokesperson, the vision is designed for a “thriving internet where people around the world can continue to access ad-supported content, while also feeling confident that their data is protected”.
“But in order to get there, we must increase transparency into how digital advertising works, offer users additional controls, and ensure that people’s choices about the use of their data are respected not worked around or ignored.”
Read More: Google Ends All Gossips: Revealed Fee Structure For Advertisement Tools
For a long time now, tech giants like Google are have faced a lot of criticism. Most of those were linked to their explicit behavior when it comes to money and user privacy. After being criticized and called upon several times by different government authorities for blind approach in the business during the usage of advertisers’ money, Google has finally decided to be more transparent with its business policies and proposals.
Therefore, Google shared a list of pricing for its tools used by advertisers for the advertisement. It was a huge step by Google, since before this release, advertisers were kept in the dark about the spent of their share of the money, and the profit earned by Google.
The tools for which Google revealed the prices include, DV360, Google Ads, ad manager, and its publisher tech.
The revealed prices are as follows:
These prices were revealed by Google in a series of articles and blog posts.
The prices are in the ratio of percentage for a $1 amount spent by an advertiser on an advertisement, divided between the publisher and Google.
- Google tech: Publishers – 69%, Google – 31%
- DV360: Publisher – 87%, Google – 13%
- Ad Manager: Publisher – 82%, Google – 18%
- Google Ads: Publisher – 86%, Google – 14%
- Ad sense by Google: 68% share taken by Google of the total spent by the advertiser.
Google has never been so transparent in regards to its prices, the sources say that this new transparent face of Google is due to the ongoing legal hearing conducted by the state attorney general and the Department of Justice.
Read More: Google Updated Its Demand-Side Platform With DV360!
Innovation has always been the motto of the company. To make sure that the advertisers at Google are equipped with the best tools available in the market, it recently launched its new self-service toolkit known as Display & Video 360.
The tool is launched to change the landscape of the advertisement. Display &Video 360 is a gift to its advertisers by Google.
Earlier, advertisers used the tools to make a hypothetical projection while running an online marketing campaign. The most crucial question that bothered the advertisers was the amount of audience that they will reach with the campaign. To make sure it’s no more a hit and try show for the advertisers, Google launched DV360.
With the DV360, the advertisers can now create a new campaign and check its reach to the audience as the tool provides a duplicate view of the campaign. The duplicate view will help the advertisers view the exact or say a more accurate number of audiences that they will reach with the campaign. Hence, no more blind bets!
The tool has better forecasting capabilities, giving the advertisers a glimpse of the future for their campaign. It is also a better solution for the media planners as it provides them with a large proportion of benefits as better access to the tool as they always have a larger role to play.
The most crucial answer answered with the tool is, “how many unique people can I expect to reach with my overall campaign across any open auction display and video inventory as well as YouTube?”
According to Anudeep Pedditi, Programmatic Manager, OMD NZ:
“Once we commit to a reach objective, neither underachieving nor overachieving is an option. Display & Video 360 gives media planners the accuracy they need to effectively plan across all our programmatic campaigns.”
The Tools main aim is to provide the following features to its advertisers:
-
-
-
-
Focus
-
Options For Buying
-
Optimization And Reporting
-
Security
-
Conclusion
-
-
-
Read More: How Google’s Page Experience Will Change the Face of SEO in 2021
Google will launch a new algorithm for its page experience and design. The new model will be based on user experience.
The new algorithm will surely affect SEO and web traffic. Therefore, to make sure that the advertisers are not affected by the changes, Google has announced that they will apply the changes in 2021. They have promised to inform upfront, at least six months beforehand.
An early reminder will help advertisers to prepare themselves for the changes.
However, Google made it clear that the new algorithm will be even stricter in ranking the web pages. If the user experience of a web-page is poor, Google will not rank the page on to the top list.
Google has also published a detailed document dedicated to the page experience criteria.
The new algorithm will consist of some core vital features. This feature includes the following:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures the loading performance of your webpage.
- First Input Delay(FID): Measures the user interaction with the page.
- Cumulative layout Shift: Checks the stability factors of your webpage.
The Accelerated Mobile version (AMP) will also play a major role in the ranking of your page, as will be a metrics for the page experience.
Also, good content will always play a lead role in the page ranking.
As per a statement:
“While all of the components of page experience are important, we will prioritize pages with the best information overall, even if some aspects of page experience are subpar.
A good page experience doesn’t override having great, relevant content. However, in cases where there are multiple pages that have similar content, page experience becomes much more important for visibility in Search.”
Hence, entrepreneurs, startups, and businesses should be well prepared for the new changes.
Read More: Every 2020 Google SERP Feature Explained: A Visual Guide
Have you ever imagine the amount of traffic Google experience in a minute, month, or year?
Well, here are some fun facts, every second there is an approximate of 63,000 search queries entered on Google search.
Also, near to 2 trillion searches are conducted every year!
Isn’t it amazing? However, you might ask, why does it matter?
Let us understand!
Google holds an approximate 72% market share of search engines. To make sure that your webpage is listed on the top of the list of Google search results you must have an understanding of Google SERP (Search Engine Result Page).
What is SERP? And, what all it provides to the advertisers on Google?
The Search Engine Result Page of Google has gone through a lot of changes according to the user view. It has become much more dynamic, relevant, personalized, and helpful.
Now the search engine of Google is equipped with several enhancements that use structured data. The search page consists of visual enhancement, better index, and optimization for the website. You must be aware of all these changes if you are planning for a better organic ranking for your website.
Here is the new enhancement for the search page of Google:
- Direct answer Box
- Rich Snippet
- Rich cards
- Knowledge Graphs
- Knowledge Panels
- Local Pack
- People also ask
- Image Pack
- Site Links
- Newsbox
You must be equipped with the knowledge of these for better results in organic ranking.
Read More: Rejoice Small Retailers: Selling Products is Now Free On Google Shopping
MSME’s got adversely affected due to the widespread of COVID-19. Several small and medium scale businesses have lost their source of income due to the sudden breakthrough of this epidemic.
Therefore to make sure that these businesses sustain the effects of the crisis, Google is allowing small retailers to list their products for free on Google Shopping.
Explaining this decision, Bill Ready, President of Commerce at Google cites the fact that it is difficult for struggling businesses to pay for Google shopping listings at this time.
“And as consumers increasingly shop online, they’re searching not just for essentials but also things like toys, apparel, and home goods.
While this presents an opportunity for struggling businesses to reconnect with consumers, many cannot afford to do so at scale.”
Earlier, Google charged its customers as Pay per click (PPC). It can also be seen as a tactic by Google to compete with Amazon in the market of e-commerce.
Read More: Privacy Sandbox By Google Shows Backdoor To The Third-Party Cookies.
Two years ago, Google announced that it will discontinue the usage of third-party cookies in its browser, which is Google Chrome. Since the announcement, several speculations surfaced, to understand its effects on internet traffic and advertisement. However, Google seems determined about the elimination, and this year Google announced “Privacy Sandbox” a step towards the replacement of third-party cookies.
It is developed to provide a secure browsing experience to its user.
According to a spoke person from Google, “This is an early-stage concept, and we don’t have more details to share right now, We plan to publish updates and progress in GitHub as part of the process.”
The concept uses a new algorithm designed by performing “Bit Request Signal Experiment”.
Privacy Sandbox was launched in August. The idea was to innovate ad recurrence and behavioral advertising. It aimed to help them work on the web without using third-party cookies. A mega event was organized, 163 giant tech organizations like Apple, Facebook, Axel Springer, The Washington Post, Criteo, The Trade Desk, and even Google participated. All are requested to share their views via. World Wide Web Consortium or GitHub to help the project succeed.
However, according to the Google developers, it is still in its initial stage and there is a lot of work that is needed to be done in this field.
Read More: Google pledges $800 million to coronavirus relief, including Ad credits
Google CEO Sundar Pichai explained:
“As the coronavirus outbreak continues to worsen around the world, it’s taking a devastating toll on lives and communities. To help address some of these challenges, today we’re announcing a new $800+ million commitment to support small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), health organizations and governments, and health workers on the frontline of this global pandemic.”
The commitment includes:
- WHO and other health organizations will get $250 million for advertisement.
- MSME’s and NGO’s will get $200 million.
- An additional $15 million in cash will be granted by Google.org to non-profits to bridge the gap between SMB’s.
- Those small businesses that are already active for a year with Google advertisement will get the help of a total of $340 million in Google ad. They will receive the credit in their accounts and can spend it by the end of 2020.
- The academic and research institutions in the field of COVID research will get $20 million.
- Financial support will be provided to the organizations to increase the production capacity for life-saving equipment.
However, not everything went great for Google during this tough time of COVID:
Read More: Google Cuts Marketing Budgets by 50%, Freezes Hiring.
Key Points
- Budget cuts and hiring freezes across marketing and across Google.
- For the second half of 2020, Google is cutting its marketing budget to 50%.
- The cut is due to the reduced expenditure on advertisement by the brands during the time of the crisis.
- The development comes in less than a week from where Google is scheduled to discuss Q1 2020 results on 28th April.
According to a statement released by email:
“There are budget cuts and hiring freezes happening across marketing and across Google…We, along with the rest of marketing, have been asked to cut our budget by about half for H2.”
A company spokesperson said in an emailed statement to CNBC,
“As we outlined last week, we are re-evaluating the pace of our investment plans for the remainder of 2020 and will focus on a select number of important marketing efforts….We continue to have a robust marketing budget, particularly in digital, in many business areas.”
…we continue to invest, but will be recalibrating the focus and pace of our investments in areas like data centers and machines, and non-business essential marketing and travel.”
Read More: Google Withhold Programmatic Data, Advertisers Pulls Back Ad Spend
As quoted by Digiday, the Head of Display at the U.S based retailer said,
“Google’s ad exchange didn’t make the list primarily because they’re not willing to give us any transparency or data around not only their take rates on our media sped but also anything we could already pull from our demand-side platform.”
“We’re seeing Google’s ad exchange become slightly less of the total pie,” said Jay Friedman, president at programmatic agency Goodway Group to DigiDay.
”I don’t have a percentage but it’s less but not significant.”, he further added.
The advertisers registered their doubts and raised concerns regarding the non-transparent behavior of Google. However, this must have been resolved after the release of the price list for its advertising tools by Google.
“Don’t Make Us Eat Internet Cookies” Says Sachin Jain, Founder Of Simplifai Labs To Microsoft.
According to Pinsent Masons, there is no specific data protection law covering all of the UAE currently available. Although a patchwork of other laws provides some rights to privacy and prohibits certain actions, including the disclosure of data obtained electronically in an unauthorised manner.
As reported by Tech Radar in 2019, a data protection law will be drafted for the UAE to support the TRA’s new national cybersecurity strategy for 2020-25. Not sure if this has been approved and implemented by Dubai Data Establishment (DDE) & Dubai Data Strategy furthermore.
However, today I have discovered that Microsoft Teams is forcing users to allow third-party cookies to make Teams load as a web app in Chrome.
Highly appreciate Microsoft Teams if you can make your web app work in any browser without having to permit third-party cookies or at least tell users which third-party cookies you are using so we can open up for those. Just enabling third-party cookies, in general, is insane!
Cookies can store a wealth of data, potentially enough to identify someone without their consent. MicrosoftTeams should cover a piece of basic information to educate, explicitly mention (on the same error page) why users have to enable the third-party cookies, the purpose, how it will benefit users when trying to access Teams application.
Are these-
- Strictly necessary cookies — These cookies are essential for users to browse the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the site. Cookies that allow webshops to hold your items in your cart while you are shopping online are an example of strictly necessary cookies. These cookies will generally be first-party session cookies. While it is not required to obtain consent for these cookies, what they do, and why they are necessary should be explained to the user.
- Preferences cookies — Also known as “functionality cookies,” these cookies allow a website to remember choices you have made in the past, like what language you prefer, what region you would like weather reports for, or what your user name and password are so you can automatically log in.
- Analytics cookies — Also known as “performance cookies,” these cookies collect information about how you use a website, like which pages you visited and which links you clicked on. None of this information can be used to identify you. It is all aggregated and, therefore, anonymized. Their sole purpose is to improve website functions. This includes cookies from third-party analytics services as long as the cookies are for the exclusive use of the owner of the website visited.
- Marketing cookies — These cookies track your online activity to help advertisers deliver more relevant advertising or to limit how many times you see an ad. These cookies can share that information with other organizations or advertisers. These are persistent cookies and almost always of third-party provenance.
As these are the main ways of classifying cookies, although there are cookies that will not fit neatly into these categories or may qualify for multiple categories. When people complain about the privacy risks presented by cookies, they are generally speaking about third-party, persistent, marketing cookies. These cookies can hold significant amounts of information about our online activity, preferences, and location.
Strongly urging TRA-UAE, Dubai Electronic Security Center (DESC), and the UAE federal government to implement data protection law similar to GDPR as personal data is any information that relates to an individual who can be directly or indirectly identified. Names and email addresses are obviously personal data. Location information, ethnicity, gender, biometric data, religious beliefs, web cookies, and political opinions can also be personal data. User consent must be freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous. Microsoft Teams Stop forcing users to allow third-party cookies!
LiveIntent and Rubicon Project Invest on a Non-Cookie Based Identifier
LiveIntent and Rubicon Project have agreed to help publishers and media to do business on a non-cookie-based identifier.
The idea is to bring the Liveintent Authenticated Bridge framework to the header to help marketers and publishers reap the benefits of the ecosystem. The framework will be delivered via the bidstream of the Rubicon Project. The Liveintent Authenticated Bridge – a unique, privacy-safe identifier known as nonID will connect advertisers to publishers using hashed email addresses – to support media buying and selling without dependence on third-party cookies.
The key to Liveintent’s addressability framework, Authenticated Bridge for publishers and marketers is powered by email. Additionally, it allows media traders to understand the primary email associated with the particular browser or device by connecting it to the first-party data signals.
Prior to the pandemic and civil rights protests, ad tech 2020 was looking for options to replace cookies after the largest internet browser Google Chrome announced a gradual phase-out of tech by 2022.
Google is yet to implement the planned updates like other web browsers. The market share of Google Chrome is almost 50% of all installed internet browsers which means it can have a huge impact on the industry and can lead to a closedown of many independent ad tech players.
In the interim, efforts are made to find a way forward for the $130 billion industry where online technologies are being monitored by privacy regulators. Liveintent powers marketing and advertising technology that is cross-device and cross-browser compatible and does not require the use of third-party cookies. CEO Matt Keiser described Authenticated Bridge solution as nonID which means open to all – anyone can adopt it. Liveintent works with around 2000 publishers and 1000 advertisers.
As reported in Adweek, Matt Keiser said,
So, we haven’t made it something you need to sign a contract in order to adopt. Additionally, our ID is 1:1 with an [anonymized] email address.
This means the days of closed solutions are over for publishers and brands as Liveintent does not encrypt its identifier per user, unlike other proprietary solutions. Publishers had to struggle to monetize the web traffic when Apple and Mozilla restricted third-party cookies. This is where the Bridge solution can help to offset such issues. Liveintent’s first-party solution is powered by its Identity Graph whose insights are directly connected with validated and active emails.
CEO Matt Keiser said,
This framework works with established vendors’ proprietary IDs but is also pen to any publisher or brand that has their own email data. LiveIntent and Rubicon Project believe in the power of open source technology and have built solutions designed for easy integration and adoption, all while adhering to data compliance.
Garrett McGrath, Vice President of Product Management, at Rubicon Project said,
We continue to work with industry partners to develop community-driven identity solutions that simplify and enhance the advertising experience for publishers, advertisers and consumers, all the while respecting data privacy. LiveIntent’s Authenticated Bridge framework provides an identity solution that is reliable, transparent, and streamlined.
He further added,
In addition to helping publishers make their inventory more accessible and useful to advertisers, people-based identifiers improve the end user’s digital media experience.
Meanwhile, many independent players like AT&T, Live Ramp, and the Trade Desk have built different IDs in the replacement of cookies and are eager to offer their offerings. Google has also built its own ID tech and solutions under Privacy Sandbox but the industry is calling for governance with rising concerns of continued dominance from the duopoly Google and Facebook.
The Guardian Introduces “The Registration Wall” To Collect First Party Data
Google and Apple have already initiated the process of discarding the third-party cookies, in their browsers. Similarly, The Guardian is asking people to sign-in, to help build the first-party data strategy.
The Guardian, in December, has initiated a testing model for its “Registration Wall”, including the only selected audience. This was shared in a post, by Caspar Llewellyn Smith, who is also a chief product officer at The Guardian.
According to him the goal of the testing is to portray more relevant advertisement to the customer and readers, this will also provide financial stability to the publishers.
The post started, “Asking readers to sign in provides us with more information that we can use to personalize our approach in asking for support, to serve advertising (with readers’ consent) and to create a better user experience.”
When a reader clicks on an article, an option to register for free appears on the screen. The user can opt for a “Not now” option if the user is not interested.
In the case of the user register, they get the perk of posting comments, exclusive access to the editorial section, and they can also opt for gift cards and discounts.
This helps the publishers to understand user preferences. The user and publishers can keep a track of the number of articles read by the user in a month.
Alice Pickthall, a senior analyst at Enders says, that it is a good job. “Registration is part of the funnel to growing reader engagement and donations while improving advertising quality and targeting so the benefit will be twofold to both strands of revenue.”
Registration walls collect the first-party data, this helps them to empower the content choice of the audience. It also, increase the accuracy of ad-targeting.
Even newspapers like the New York Times, Tribune Publishing, Hearst Newspapers are considering to implement registration walls on their websites.
With the help of registration walls, the publishers can have a better understanding of the users’ psych and therefore, they can target the ads according to the user preferences.
The Registration Wall leads publishers to a ten times higher conversion rate, as reported by the subscription platform Piano.
According to Thomas Beakdal, a media analyst, the first-party data helps to retain the customer, “You can’t do good churn analysis without first-party data.”
Even, the first-party data helps to increase the number of subscribers.
According to Nordic publisher Schibsted, an increase of subscribers was noticed when they analyzed their first-party data and understood the reason behind the cancellation journey of their users.
As the concept of third-party cookies is dying, the publishers’ community must build a first-party database. It will help publishers like Vox, Business Insiders and The Washington Posts in sustaining their businesses.
A registration wall will help publishers to collect details like email, phone number, name etc. helping them efficiently targeting their audience.
In just one year of installing registration wall on their website, The New York Times swears to never use third-party cookies for advertising.
The Guardian intends to provide a wonderful journalism experience to their audiences. They don’t want to compromise on it at any end. They feel that it’s a civic right of a human to get accurate information during these tough times of pandemic. The introduction of the registration wall is another step in that direction.
Online news platforms are experiencing heavy traffic on their website. Although, the revenue generated by advertisement is pretty low.
It’s astonishing that in March, The Guardian experienced a record-breaking user interaction on its unique browser. Since February, the number doubled and reached toa recorded of 336 million. As in February, this number was recorded to be 191 million.
Both, the number of daily visitors, and weekly visitors on the website have increased. In October 2019, The Guardian set a record of the maximum number of readers with some 750 million. This year in March 2020, it broke its record by reaching some 2.17 billion.
However, the data showed that The Guardian in the U.K experienced a downfall of the user database in April 2020. In March 2020, the number of readers was 35.7 million. In April it dropped down to 34.7 million. Still, it’s great when compared to February 2019, 25.6M unique readers.
Due to Covid-19, the publishers have seen a decrease in spent on advertisements. There is a downfall of 65% on the spent.
However, The Guardian is all set to achieve 2M paying supporters by the year 2022.
Privacy Sandbox By Google Shows Backdoor To The Third-Party Cookies.
For the last two years, Google has been working to remove third-party cookies from it’s Google Chrome browser. Moving forward with this aspiration Google recently announced testing some of its “Privacy Sandbox” proposals. Google wants to test the algorithm with other exchanges and demand-side platforms. It seeks to examine the process of implementation and ways to deliver a better-guarded program to its users. Google will also make sure that this solution works inside the policies of advertising auctions.
It was in late April when Google made its big announcement. Google revealed its intentions on the “Bit Request Signal Experiment.” The announcement was made by a post on GitHub, which is a collaboration stage for software developers. Google invited advertising tech firms to take part in the testing so that they can receive some real-time algorithm test results. They affirmed the uncertainty of dates for live testing of Privacy Sandbox. They still wanted ad firms to respond to them, affirming if they are enthusiastic to help.
Soon speculations and news started flooding the tech industry!
“This is an early-stage concept and we don’t have more details to share right now, We plan to publish updates and progres s in GitHub as part of the process.”, quoted a Google spokesperson on GitHub.
Google team declared discontinuing support for the third-party cookies in January. Providing an explanation stating that they want to encourage publishers, advertising companies, and other providers of browsers to come up with a new set of rules which are user-privacy centric and follow open measures for the web.
Privacy Sandbox was launched in August, the idea was to innovate the ad recurrence and behavioral advertising. Aimed to help them work on the web without using third-party cookies. In a mega event with, 163 giant tech organizations like Apple, Facebook, Axel Springer, The Washington Post, Criteo, The Trade Desk, and even Google. All are requested to share their views via. World Wide Web Consortium or GitHub to help the project succeed.
A member from the “RTB group,” from Google posted on GitHub. Sharing insights on the bigger picture and a bit clear version of the cookieless browsing. Explaining the process, he talked about how user targeting will be done. He introduced the machine-learning algorithm known as “Federated Learning of Cohorts” which will be used in the working of cookieless browsing. Further, he explained that the algorithm will group people into different segments of the audience by understanding their behavior, likely by their browsing history.
He stated that this will improve the privacy of the users. This algorithm isn’t designed to target any user in particular. Instead, it will target a group of audiences. This group is also be known as “FloCs”. The algorithm is designed to group people on the basis of their similar interests.
Google posted on GitHub stating:
“Exchanges could offer a uniform RTB interface for aggregated audience targeting to bidders regardless of the data source,”
Another post that surfaced on GitHub from Google stated the following:
“Exchanges can explore the separation between contextual and user interest components in the RTB data flow, along with hosting the ad selection logic that needs access to both components (for instance, brand safety checks for a product retargeting ad) in a sandbox.”
Google provides an exchange with options to set a “Privacy budget.” According to the budget, an exchange can request a particular unit of data. If the data limit will surpass the budget, it will lead to an error, or as a consequence the data will be preserved in greater privacy. Presenting an option for user privacy, it can easily be determined that how much data needs to be revealed?
Google is beseeching bidders and exchanges to run real-world small scale “RTB” experiments. This will help them to test the algorithm real-time bases and with live scenarios.
Tom Kershaw, chief technology officer of Rubicon Project and a member of the World Wide Web Consortium’s Improving Web Advertising Business Group, said that they welcome the proposals. But the project is in the exceptionally fundamental stage.
Another statement came from Kershaw, chairman of the Prebid.org ad tech industry organization stating that “These are experiments with a capital E, We support these initiatives but there is not a single proposal on the table close to being adoptable right now. A ton of work needs to be done.”
Another member of the Improving Web Advertising Business Group states that the project is in its evolution pipeline and it’s going to take a long time to develop a technical standard.
He also added “It’s great, given the implications of what’s at stake, that the advertising arm of Google is attempting to implement what the browser arm is doing. It’s a really important step in the process.”