Privacy Sandbox: Here’s how Google will show you relevant ads without cookies

User privacy has been getting a lot of attention lately. Tech giants and even device makers taking proactive steps to give users better control over what gets shared through apps and browser history. Obviously, advertisers are concerned as the move would impede their ability to deliver targeted ads to the right audience but Google has been working to balance things out with its Privacy Sandbox.

According to Vinay Goel, the Product Director for Privacy Sandbox at Chrome, the initiative is aimed at improving web privacy for users while giving publishers, creators, and other developers the tools they need to build thriving businesses while ensuring a safe and healthy web for all. They are aware that online advertising is critical for many businesses and it is key to support access to free content online.

At the moment, cookies are vital for advertisers to track user behaviour and interest, but it is also seen as a privacy concern. Interest targeting is important as it will allow advertisers to show the right ads to the right user. For example, a user that has a recent interest in travel would likely click ads from hotels and flights, while a user that has been browsing automotive content, would be more likely to click on ads from car brands. This would help advertisers run cost-effective campaigns with higher click-thru and conversation rates.

Google has previously announced that it will remove third-party cookies by 2023 but they have recently revealed that they are targetting to drop cookies from their Chrome browser starting in Q3 2022. So how will advertisers run interest-based ads without cookies?

Better privacy with browser-based Topics

As part of its Privacy Sandbox initiative, Google has announced Topics to enable interest-based advertising. Instead of using cookies, your web browser will identify up to 5 top topics which represent your interest based on your browser history in the past 3 weeks. It doesn’t track users, and the topics are stored only on your device’s browser, not on any 3rd party server or external websites.

With this feature, websites would only show ads based on the topics identified by your browser without needing to know exactly which websites you’ve visited previously. In other words, it is your browser that decides what ads are shown to you. To identify topics that are of interest to you, Chrome uses the mapping of websites and subdomains to the topic.

As a user, you can view identified topics in your browser for full transparency and control. If a certain topic is no longer relevant, you can remove it or disable the topic completely. At the moment, there are about 350 topics available and more would be added along the way. Google is also looking at having topics curated from a third party to expand the list. According to Google, the list does not include sensitive topics such as race, sexual orientation, and religion.

Since Topics is browser-based and not linked to your personal identity, it is possible for a user to get served different ads on their smartphone, tablet, and computer. For example, if you’ve searched for hotels only on your smartphone, you shouldn’t get travel-related ads on your other devices.

Remarketing ads made possible with FLEDGE

Besides Topics, Google also has FLEDGE which allows advertisers to run remarketing and custom audience ads. Remarketing ads are vital for online businesses including eCommerce platforms to drive users into completing a transaction or to upsell a relevant product. These campaigns are normally run by airlines and hotel booking sites where they will display ads based on your past behaviour.

With FLEDGE, advertisers can show relevant ads without cross-site tracking which relied on cookies. This is made possible with on-device auctions on the browser which will choose ads based on websites the user has visited. For this to happen, the browser will be asked to add an interest group via Javascript and the ad auction will run on the device itself with realtime data from trusted servers. According to Google, the browser holds the information, not the advertiser or ad tech platforms.

This method will allow the browser to show the remarketing ad while keeping user interest and browser history private. This means the ad network or the website will not know your interest when you visit them.

At the moment, Privacy Sandbox is led by Chrome but it is open to everyone in the industry to use. Google emphasised that it doesn’t want to build a cookie alternative but to replace it completely with more privacy methods to fight spam, fraud and to combat covert tracking techniques.

You can learn more about Topics and FLEDGE on The Privacy Sandbox site.

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