As we all know, Google is making a move to remove third-party cookies from all Chrome browsers to preserve users' privacy. They have shifted the deadline for this a few times as they try to perfect their 'privacy preserving' alternative solution to cookie-based tracking and marketing. Google calls this the Privacy Sandbox initiative.
Here's a short video about Google's initiative:
Marketing is central to Google's revenue and how we can keep a lot of the content and functions of the internet free. With cookie-based tracking being an industry standard for so long, Google now has to find a functional and effective alternative to sustain their revenue stream through advertising.
Topics, FLEDGE and Attribution Reporting are the 3 key proposals that Google are working on rolling out. Here's more on each of them:
Topics API
With Topics, your browser determines your top most interest for that week by specific topics such as 'Fitness' based on your browsing history. Google are starting with 300 topics that anyone can fall under. Your browser can store up to 5 topics that will be stored for 3 weeks, and these evolve with your browsing history. The Topics are determined based on the domain or subdomain of the website that you are on, not the content or text of the page that you are on. If the site does not participate in the Topics API, then it does not provide or receive a topic.
Topics is the successor of Google's original solution, FLoC. The key difference is that FLoC groups users into cohorts based on their interests and the data is updated on a weekly basis. FLoC has since been deprecated due to the possibility of distinguishing a user's browser from others using fingerprinting techniques.
FLEDGE API
FLEDGE or "First Locally-Executed Decision over Groups Experiment" is Google's solution to audience targeting and remarketing. Previously, cross-site tracking was used to build audiences for targeting and retargeting activity. With the FLEDGE API, advertisers can add their membership to an interest group when a user is on their site. This allows the user's browser to record information such as the name of the interest group (e.g. women's running shoes), the owner of the interest group (e.g. the DSP), and interest group configuration such as bidding code, ad code and real-time data. Later when a user is on a publisher's site, an on-device auction is run to display the most relevant ad. The auction is only run for interest groups that the user is a member of, and only advertisers who are members of the interest groups are invited to the auction.
Attribution Reporting
This is Google's solution to conversion measurement. Previously we could track an ad click or ad view all the way through to a sale or conversion using cookie attribution. Google Attribution Reporting solution still allows us to do this, while preserving user privacy. There are two levels of reporting - Event Level and Aggregate Level. The Event Level reporting allows us to track user's clicks or views and tie them to a final conversion. Aggregate Level reporting on the other hand, aggregates the data and does not associate data with a particular click or user. With this API, no user-identifying data is shared between sites and instead the user's web browser records all this conversion data and sends an encrypted report to the advertiser.
Comments