Online Publishers Are Concerned About Google’s New Privacy Policy! But, Should They?

Google releases new Privacy Policy

We all have come across typical jargon-filled privacy notifications whenever we visit a new website on the internet. Sometimes these pop-ups would not even let you enter a website unless you click “accept,” so most of us don’t have a choice rather than blindly granting access to information. However, Google’s latest privacy updates have aimed to remove such third-party cookies that collect personal information. Through this initiative, Google intends to make it easy for customers to comprehend and thwart tracking but advertisers, digital marketers, and publishers are rather skeptical about this newfound love for privacy. This shift is expected to have rather profound implications for online publishers, who may no longer be able to access website user information to boost the efficacy of customer outreach. It will be a reckoning for the advertising industry as they will lose access to most third-party data, which has continuously powered programmatic advertising over the past decade.

Therefore, To help publishers stay current on these privacy topics and learn more about Privacy Sandbox, we will address your most asked questions.

Why is Google prioritizing privacy right now?

The need for Privacy Policy right now.

After innumerable privacy breaches that prompted increased scrutiny from authorities, Google had to put privacy at the center of its efforts. Nevertheless, Apple also recently turned privacy into a major selling point with their pop-up window that asks for permission to be tracked. All this along with the Government regulations, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Customer Privacy Act (CCPA), have already begun to place limits on the use of customer data. To keep up with all these privacy demands, Google has no choice but to reinvent several digital advertising capabilities that they have relied on for decades. Even though the third-party cookie has enabled tremendous innovation and economic growth over the past 25 years, this technology wasn’t developed with user privacy in mind. So in order to meet user demands and expectations in privacy, Google is moving away from third-party cookies and other advertising strategies that track individual users as they browse across the web. Don’t worry about third-party cookies if you are unfamiliar, just let Click Chef Digital take care of it.

What is the Privacy Sandbox and how does it work? 

Launched back in 2019, the Privacy Sandbox is an open-source, collaborative initiative from Google that aims to develop new technologies in the form of web standards in order to help reinforce online privacy. It allows different internet users such as online publishers, ad tech companies, advertisers, developers, etc to collaborate and contribute to the development of the Privacy Sandbox. The Privacy Sandbox initiative by Google, therefore, aims to build innovative web technologies that not only protect our privacy but also give enterprises the tools to create digital solutions that keep the web accessible to everyone. Based on this principle, the Privacy Sandbox lets you leverage the latest privacy techniques, like differential privacy, k-anonymity, and on-device processing, to deliver great web experiences, but with more enhanced privacy protections. These innovations will make third-party cookies obsolete, allowing web browsers to block third-party cookies while still supporting key website capabilities. It is crucial to handle such a change, so make sure you have experts for PPC, SEO, and Local SEO who can do it for you.

When will third-party cookies go away?

Google`s Privacy Policy will take away third party cookies.

Although third-party cookies have already been removed from several major browsers, such as Firefox and Safari, Chrome is yet to make those changes. The search engine giant has announced that it is delaying the plans to eliminate third-party cookies in the Chrome browser until 2023. Over this period, Google will work with online advertisers and digital marketing websites to ensure that this pivot does not significantly affect the online advertising community. Also, Google’s decision to delay the implementation seems caused by the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)’s investigation into Google Privacy Sandbox strategy to replace third-party cookies. Essentially, during this time, Google aims to associate more closely with developers and regulators to enhance privacy and develop new technologies that marketers can leverage to replace third-party cookies. They also aim to further enhance their FLoC model algorithms to ensure that users’ browsing history never leaves their devices.

What does Google Privacy mean for publisher revenue?

Though Google claims that it’s too early to tell how the publishers might be affected by the new privacy policy, most advertisers are almost certain that it will become impossible to set up audience targeting and direct lead generation. This might lead to a huge loss in ad revenue especially since the third-party cookies are disabled and it will, in turn, affect the publishers’ ad personalization options. But Google has not completely abandoned publishers, in fact, they have proposed a different approach for businesses to reach people with relevant content; through FLoC. Federated Learning of Cohorts or FLoC aims to help publishers and advertisers adapt to the “privacy-first world.” With this initiative, Google Chrome users will be grouped or flocked based on shared interests and behaviors. It will help advertisers and publishers to deliver targeted, personalized ads for products, services, and/or content of interest to relevant groups based on their recent browsing history. Also, Chrome users don’t have to worry about Google tracking their browsing activity because their data is classified and grouped with the data of other users with similar interests. So if you are a company that doesn’t want to lose your ad revenue it’s better to let the PPC experts handle that.

What will I need to do to use the Privacy Sandbox?

The proposals of Privacy Sandbox are still under development. And since the Privacy Sandbox benefits everyone, Google declared that they are interested to work with Chrome users and advertisers in making sure that the publisher’s feedback on each of the five API’s are addressed. 

The API’s are :

  • Trust Token API
  • Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC)
  • Conversion Measurement API
  • Retargeting
  • Aggregated Reporting API

Everyone has different opinions and suggestions related to the new privacy policy. Therefore, publishers, advertisers, business stakeholders, etc are welcome to provide their feedback by filing issues on explainers hosted on Github. They can do this with the help of the blink-dev intent posts, or in any relevant standards body. In other cases, for suggestions on ads-focused API proposals in particular, feedback can be provided on the web standards community proposals via GitHub. Publishers can even check whether their concerns have been addressed or not; if not they can file issues through GitHub or email the W3C group. 

Want to gain more insights on how the Privacy Sandbox will keep people’s data private? In our next blog, we will provide detailed information on how the Privacy Sandbox protects people’s privacy and what publishers and advertisers will be able to do with it. 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *