Google is clarifying its specific advertising plans as it gradually eliminates the use of browser cookies, saying on Wednesday in a new blog post that it will not use other ways to “crawl” Internet users after ending support for to cookies in Chrome.
Last year, the company said it would end support for third-party cookies, which feed much of the digital advertising ecosystem, to the Chrome browser within two years from January 2020. Instead, Google says it will only use “privacy-preserving technologies” that are based on methods such as anonymization or data aggregation.
The blog post by David Temkin, director of product management for ad privacy and trust, says the company has received questions about whether Google “will join other companies in the advertising technology industry that have planned replace third-party cookies with alternative user-level identifiers. “Advertising technology agents have been working on forms of marketing that balance consumer privacy, while maintaining the personalization of advertising after they can no longer use cookies.
“Today we explicitly state that once we remove third-party cookies, we will not create alternative identifiers to track people as they browse the web or use them in our products,” says the Google post.
Cookies are small pieces of code that websites offer to the visitor’s browser and are maintained as the person visits other sites. They can be used to track users from multiple sites, target ads, and see how they work. Google said last year that it would end support for these cookies in Chrome once it had figured out how to address the needs of users, publishers and advertisers and had tools to mitigate the solutions. The company said its intention was to do so within two years, in early 2022.
To do this, Google launched its “Privacy Sandbox” initiative to find a solution that protects user privacy and allows content to be available for free on the open web. In January, Google said it was “extremely confident” of the progress of its proposals to replace cookies and that it plans to start testing a proposal with advertisers in Google Ads next quarter. This proposal, specifically called “Federated Cohort Learning,” would basically outline people in groups based on similar browsing behaviors, meaning that only “cohort identifiers” and not individual user identifiers would be used to target -the bear.
Google says this is about how its own ad products will work and will not restrict what might happen to 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 specifically talk about any initiatives.
Unified ID 2.0 is an initiative in which several leading advertising technology companies work together, based on coded and coded email addresses by consumers who give their consent. The public company LiveRamp also has what it calls its “authenticated traffic solution,” which it says implies that consumers choose to control their data, and on the other hand, brands and publishers can use that data.
Temkin says in the message that other providers “may offer a level of user identity for tracking ads on the network that we don’t like, such as PII graphics based on people’s email addresses.”
“We do not believe that these solutions will meet growing consumer privacy expectations, nor will they withstand the rapidly evolving regulatory constraints and are therefore not a long-term sustainable investment,” the blog post says. “Instead, our web products will be based on privacy-preserving APIs that prevent individual tracking while delivering results for advertisers and publishers.”
Google had informed several major advertisers and groups about the publication before Wednesday, including George Popstefanov, founder and CEO of the digital agency PMG.
Popstefanov said in an email that, although it is a dynamic change, “we have been preparing for a while.”
“After last year’s announcement of phasing out third-party cookies, many of our customers have been moving quickly to build their data infrastructure and invest in their CRM, to make better use of their data. of third parties, ”he said. “The important thing is that consumer behavior does not change fundamentally, only our ability to track and measure behaviors as we are used to. The importance of strategic planning and information will be more important than ever to understand the public. and how to connect at the right times and in ways that are relevant to the context. “
He added that he believes Google is motivated to design its products and solutions to solve the new reality.
“Marketing professionals are already diversifying their spending into more areas up and down the funnel, so it’s up to Google to find solutions to attract brands and support investments and the impact of marketers.” , he said.
Alec Stapp, director of technology policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, defined Google news as a step in the right direction for user privacy. The group has received funding from Google and other major technology agents, Protocol reported last year.
“However, companies, even very large ones, can only do so many things on their own,” he said in an email. “Policy makers need to step in and formalize rules that protect users’ privacy, keeping in mind that they don’t bury users on an endless series of participation screens.”
Jon Halvorson, world vice president of consumer experience at Mondelez International, said the decision is consistent with consumer feedback on what they want and expect. He said the company will do some testing on “FLoC” and incorporate it into this year’s business plans.
“We don’t believe it can be privacy or performance, advertisers need and require both,” he said in an email.