In the latest update of its plans to replace third-party cookies for advertising, Google said the tests for a particular proposal look promising.
Google plans to share some new findings that show the effectiveness of its “Federated Cohort Learning” proposal, which is part of Chrome’s “Privacy Sandbox” in a blog post running on Monday. “Sandbox” is an initiative launched in 2019 to find alternatives to cookies, while reducing the impact on publishers and other players. In the words of Google, it was about finding a solution that would protect both the privacy of users and allow the content to remain free available on the open web.
Shortly after announcing the initiative, Google said it would end support for third-party cookies, which feed much of the digital advertising ecosystem, into the Chrome browser within two years from January 2020.
Chrome engineers have worked with the wider industry, including the W3C web standards organization, on Sandbox ideas that have been proposed by Google and other advertising technology players. It will probably result in a number of ideas that will go further, says Google.
“This is a proposal,” Chetna Bindra, product manager for user trust and privacy at Google, told CNBC about the “FLoC” progress. “It is not absolutely the final or singular proposal to replace third-party cookies … There will be no final API that will go further, it will be a collection of them that allows things like interest-based advertising, as well as for cases the use of metrics, where it is essential to be able to ensure that advertisers can measure the effectiveness of their ads. ”
Bindra said the company was “extremely confident” in the progress made so far on proposals and tests.
Monday’s Google post says test results show that FLoC (pronounced like a flock of birds, consistent with a number of bird-themed proposals such as “Turtledove” and “Swallow”) is “an effective signal to replace cookies.” from third parties. “It is said that advertisers can expect to see at least 95% of the dollar conversions spent compared to cookie-based advertising.
FLoC would essentially 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. The web history and input data for the algorithm would be stored in the browser, the browser exposing only a “cohort” containing thousands of people.
“We really see that one of these first Sandbox technologies for interest-based advertising is literally almost as effective as third-party cookies,” said Bindra. “There are definitely a lot more tests to come. We are very eager for advertisers and advertising technology to get directly involved.”
Bindra said that these cohorts, which could include people who have behaviors such as an interest in gardening or rock music, would still allow targeting based on those interests. Instead of targeting at the individual level, however, it would target groups.
“The only difference will be that now I don’t follow every user on the web. There really is the notion of privacy for those users who are now grouped in a cohort,” Bindra said.
She added that the figures in the FLoC tests should be reassuring for publishers. Chrome will continue to make cohorts available for public testing with its next release in March, and expects to begin testing FLoC-based cohorts with Google Ads advertisers in the second quarter, the blog post said.
Myles Younger, senior director at MightyHive’s global data office, said all Sandbox proposals come with “how we can build new features in the Chrome web browser to simultaneously resolve user privacy and the death of a third-party cookie while maintaining capacity.” brands to advertise effectively. “He spoke before Google ‘s latest findings were published.
One question is whether the players will actually use it.
“I’m not sure it’s something that Google is able to do and start,” he said. “Publishers need to use it. People need to start using this system. [Google] it has to prove it works. ”
Paul Bannister, director of strategy at CafeMedia, said advertisers and publishers have an unknown fear of what’s to come.
“I think we all want to believe that this will be good and we all want to get to a place where users have more privacy and the web works better,” he said. But given how complicated and technical the process is, it is not clear what will really happen next.
He said there was some fear that such actions could benefit the “walled gardens” of companies such as Facebook and away from internet advertising.
UK antitrust authorities also have an eye on plans and are investigating whether Chrome’s third-party cookie removal plan could affect online advertising competition. The Competition and Markets Authority is examining whether Google’s plans could cause advertisers to shift costs to Google’s own tools to the detriment of its competitors.
In an email response, Bindra said: “The Privacy Sandbox was an open initiative from the beginning and we welcome the involvement of CMA as we work to develop new proposals to support a healthy, ad-supported web. , without third party cookies. “
Some privacy advocates are also skeptical of the “FLoC” approach. The Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in 2019 that these cohorts could be used in harmful ways, allowing discriminating advertisers to identify and filter out groups that represent vulnerable populations.
“A herd name would essentially be a behavioral credit score: a digital forehead tattoo that provides a brief summary of who you are, what you like, where you go, what you buy, and who you associate with,” EFF staff technician Bennett Cyphers wrote in the blog post. “The name of the herd will probably be inscrutable to users, but it could reveal incredibly sensitive information to third parties.”
It is a question for some whether machine learning would create cohorts based on health issues or low-income status or other sensitive attributes.
“It can do very creepy and undoubtedly illegal things,” Bannister said. “How will Chrome protect against this?”
Google said in documents that its analysis assesses whether a cohort can be sensitive without knowing why it is sensitive, and said cohorts that reveal “sensitive categories” such as race, sexuality or personal difficulties have been blocked or grouping algorithms have been reconfigured. to reduce the correlation.
Google added that it is against its policies to run personalized ads in these sensitive categories.
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