{"id":14755,"date":"2020-03-12T05:35:56","date_gmt":"2020-03-12T00:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.adpushup.com\/blog\/?p=14755"},"modified":"2023-10-18T17:21:55","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T11:51:55","slug":"google-privacy-sandbox-a-look-at-the-alternative-to-third-party-cookies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adpushup.com\/blog\/google-privacy-sandbox-a-look-at-the-alternative-to-third-party-cookies\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Privacy Sandbox: A Look at the Alternative to Third-Party Cookies","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As you probably know, following Safari’s and Mozilla’s lead, Chrome is also deprecating third-party cookies. Sure, it may take some time<\/a>, but for publishers who rely on cookie-based tracking for behavioral targeting\u2014it’s a huge shock to the system. It means discarding a mechanism that pretty much set the foundation for how personalized digital ads are delivered on the web.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recent study<\/a>, Google found that, \u201cdigital publishers lose 52% of revenue on average when readers set their web browsers to block cookies.\u201d<\/strong> Google is in a unique position of being one of the largest browser vendors and<\/em> advertising vendors by market share\u2014which means that blocking third-party cookies<\/a> is going to hurt Google as well. The reason Google is taking such a hard stance nevertheless, is two-fold: (1) Recent regulatory crackdown on lax online privacy standards and (2) The prospect of losing browser market share to more privacy-focussed browsers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Panic on the Sell-side<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the publishing community is struck with panic. “What will happen now? How will we track users? Can we survive on contextual targeting? How can we use our first-party data? Should we pivot to a subscription model?” These are some of the question running through every publisher’s mind right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a direct consequence, industry publications and ad tech events have been busy covering some or the other variation of “surviving the cookiepocalypse”<\/strong>. (Full disclosure: We’re doing a webinar on it too, you can register for it here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many initiatives are currently underway<\/strong>, and solutions being proposed, as a way to counteract the sudden loss of cookie-based data, including IAB’s Project Rearc<\/a>, universal<\/a> IDs<\/a>, identity resolution<\/a>, email hashing<\/a>, contextual targeting<\/a>, and many others. Only time will tell how effective these solutions are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This might make you wonder, Google lit the fuse on this entire thing\u2014what it is doing about it? Google does<\/em> have a plan.<\/strong> And it’s called the Privacy Sandbox. In a blog post about the initiative<\/a>, Justin Schuh, Director, Chrome Engineering, said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are confident that with continued iteration and feedback, privacy-preserving and open-standard mechanisms like the Privacy Sandbox can sustain a healthy, ad-supported web in a way that will render third-party cookies obsolete.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Rendering third-party cookies obsolete is a tall claim to make for anyone right now. But if anyone can do it, it’s probably Google. So what exactly is the Privacy Sandbox<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding the Privacy Sandbox<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The underlying principle of the privacy sandbox is anonymizing user data, while still allowing advertisers to continue using behavioral targeting, without the pervasiveness associated with third-party cookies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Google<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Since the Privacy Sandbox project is in its infancy, no actual platform or code currently exists for advertisers to test. The platform is proposed to run on several application programming interfaces (APIs) and additional features:<\/p>\n\n\n\n