Privacy Sandbox

In this edition of the Cookieless Newsroom, we highlight Microsoft’s deployment of the Ad Selection API in its Edge browser, a tool similar to Privacy Sandbox's Protected Audience API. We also cover a recent academic study demonstrating the suitability of the Protected Audience API for retargeting. Additionally, we report on a landmark European regulatory fine imposed on Google’s MarTech division.

In this media review, you can find out more about the latest Google announcements concerning the 3rd-party cookie phase out being postponed until 2024 [Note: In April 2024, it was further postponed until early 2025] and the tests expansion for the Privacy Sandbox for the Web, the news connected with Google’s Origin Trials and Topics API, as well as the reboot to the EU’s digital rulebook by the European parliament—DSA and DMA.

Everyone loves a good challenge, but some are tougher to tackle than others. For marketers, the big one is the personalization paradox. 71% of consumers prefer personalized ad content, but 74% are also concerned about how advertisers are actually using their personal data. This creates a problem for marketers. They want to reach out to their customers with personalized content but often rely on tracking technologies that are considered invasive. Fortunately, there is an answer to this particular paradox. Brands can use data-driven strategy to leverage large anonymized datasets that provide rich personalization at scale without compromising on privacy.

Six months ago, during IETF 111, Google engineers made it clear that they were approaching a new iteration of FLoC, which was related to site topics. Yesterday, they finally announced Topics API. The ad topics concept has also been explored by Meta engineers in their Ad Topic Hints proposal, which builds on user feedback to displayed ads. Also, the PAURAQUE proposal from NextRoll was proposed in such a way that users could define topics which are interesting for them and can be used for personalization.

The digital world is a complex ecosystem designed to simplify access to information and help people connect easier with fewer limitations. While not paying for it directly, we need to remember that apart from being a content platform, the Internet is also an enormous marketplace, where we – as users – are clients.

In this Media Review, we bring together 5 stories, including Apple facing a new lawsuit over its data collection practices, the Privacy Sandbox expansion for web testing in 2023, and the EU’s Digital Services Act entering into force.