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22 August 2024: Apple has announced that it will allow users to delete its Safari web browser, the App Store, as well as its photo, camera, messaging, and phone apps. It will also adjust its app choice screens to ensure a level playing field for third-party software. [The Wall Street Journal]
14 August 2024: Meta has opened access to third-party analytics tools directly through its ad platform API. The company is currently testing integrations with Google Analytics and Northbeam, with plans to add Triple Whale and Adobe Analytics soon. [AdExchanger]
5 August 2024: Google has been ruled a monopolist in the U.S. search market. Its partnership with Safari, where Google serves as the default search engine, has been deemed anticompetitive. [CNN]
29 July 2024: The W3C has called for Chrome to reverse its decision on third-party cookies and fully phase them out for all users, citing concerns about their detrimental impact on user privacy. [W3C]
24 July 2024: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that hashing user identifiers does not ensure anonymity. According to the FTC, hashing "creates a unique signature that can still track a person or device over time.” [FTC]
23 July 2024: Meta has until 1 September to address the Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Network's concerns regarding its "Pay or Okay" consent model. [Techcrunch]
22 July 2024: Google Ads released test results from its Privacy Sandbox initiative, detailing the following insights:
Scale: 89% advertiser spend recovery on Google Display Ads, and 86% on DV360.
ROI: 97% recovery in conversions per dollar (CPD) on Google Display Ads, and 95% on DV360 for conversion-oriented campaigns.
Remarketing: 55% spend recovery in Google Ads, and 49% in DV360. [Google Ads]
22 July 2024: Chrome proposed an alternative approach to third-party cookie deprecation, allowing users to decide whether to permit third-party cookies in their browsers. Development of the Privacy Sandbox will continue. [Privacy Sandbox]
18 July 2024: Italian regulators have initiated an investigation into how Google acquires user consent to link their activities across various services for ad profiling. The investigation will be conducted under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and GDPR, focusing on transparency and user manipulation concerns. [Techcrunch]
17 July 2024: Google has released its First Party Mode to beta, allowing traffic from Google tags to be routed through a same-origin endpoint using first-party infrastructure. [Google Developers]
16 July 2024: Privacy Sandbox has released its official response to the tests of its APIs conducted by various companies. The team emphasized that while these early results are informative, they are not necessarily predictive of future performance. Achieving more reliable outcomes will require larger-scale testing and broader industry participation. [Privacy Sandbox]
16 July 2024: Safari version 17.0 introduced enhanced privacy protections:
Private Browsing Mode: Link tracking protection, blocking network loads from known trackers, advanced fingerprinting protection, and disallowing extensions from accessing website data or history.
All Browsing Modes: A capped lifetime of cookies set by cloaked third-party IP addresses. [Webkit]
See also: What Are First-Party Cookies, and How Can Brands Use Them to Reach Customers?
16 July 2024: IAB Tech Lab published an early draft of its PAIR (Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation) protocol, aiming to standardize privacy-centric identity reconciliation. [IAB Tech Lab's public doc]
11 July 2024: A Google spokesperson confirmed that the company will soon release its proposal for the future governance model of the Privacy Sandbox. [Adweek]
10 July 2024: Google Ads issued guidance on how to support video ads within the Component-seller Auction for the Protected Audience API. [Github]
9 July 2024: Mozilla launched origin trials for its Privacy Preserving Attribution API, a browser-based ad attribution tool aimed at enhancing privacy while measuring ad performance. [Mozilla]
8 July 2024: NextRoll released its Privacy Sandbox testing results, reporting key findings such as a 3x increase in CPM, 2x higher CPC, scalable and performant Aggregation Services, and challenges with high latency. [NextRoll]
