Another Delay in Third-Party Cookies Phase-Out, CMA Disconcerted

Navigate to the hottest topics:

• Third-party cookies will stay with us until at least 2025. – 23 Apr

• CMA identifies many areas of concern in reference to Privacy Sandbox’s development. – 26 Apr

• Edge is working on an API similar to Chrome’s Protected Audience API, but there’s at least one key difference between them. – 25 Mar
  

• 26 Apr 2024: British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) releases its Q1 2024 report, which includes a long list of outstanding concerns, including:

  • Insufficient user protection (observed by the ICO) and lack of transparency.

  • Google Ad Manager’s role as a top-lever seller and “last-look” privileges.

  • Google’s advantage with first-party data from its Own & Operated inventory, access to which should be restricted (as CMA suggests).

  • Only two cloud providers (one of which is Google) are accepted as Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) vendors for Privacy Sandbox.

  • High latency resulting in publishers’ CPMs reduction.
    [CMA Q1 2024 update report on implementation of the Privacy Sandbox commitment]

Report

Above and Beyond: Maximizing ROI in Travel with Advanced Programmatic Advertising Strategies

People are eager to travel again, fueling the industry's reinvention post-pandemic. See the solid strategies outlined in this report.

• 23 Apr 2024: Chrome delays further third-party cookie deprecation until early 2025 as a result of divergent feedback and in order to grant CMA’s sufficient time to evaluate submitted evidence. [Privacy Sandbox Website]

• 20 Apr 2024: Garrett Johnson creates a dashboard with Sincera to monitor Privacy Sandbox’s adoption across the AdTech ecosystem. [Sincera Dashboard]

• 18 Apr 2024: The UK privacy regulator (ICO) says Privacy Sandbox needs to improve consumer privacy, as it “leaves gaps that can be exploited to undermine privacy and identify users who should be kept anonymous,” and shares its concerns with the British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). [Reuters]

See also: What is Google’s Privacy Sandbox? The Ultimate Guide

• 18 Apr 2024: The European Data Protection Board released an order that deems Meta’s “Pay or OK” model illegal. [AdExchanger]

• 3 Apr 2024: Mozilla releases an analysis on PA API, where it claims it to be a good (but complex) attempt to alleviate competition’s concerns regarding third-party cookies deprecation. It also ascertains that its original form is good for users’ privacy. However, Chrome’s temporary concessions to ease marketers’ adoption created privacy holes. Mozilla is skeptical about those holes ever being fixed, which results in a tool benefiting advertisers, not users. [Mozilla Blog]

Case Study

Consistent Performance and Excellent Client Service Drive Client Success

• 3 Apr 2024: Google agrees to delete billions of records and restrict tracking in its “Incognito” private browsing mode. [BBC]

• 27 Mar 2024: Amazon is to provide information about the ads running on its platform in a publicly accessible online archive under the Digital Markets Act (DSA). [Techcrunch]

• 25 Mar 2024: The author notices that one will be able to merge interest groups in Ad Selection API (Microsoft’s Protected Audience API’s equivalent), which means that the advertiser-publisher information flow will not be as isolated as in Protected Audience API. Buyers will have access to some cross-site information. [Ad Tech Explained]