Here to stay!
Cookies are not dead, quite yet, but they have named a feckless heir. While the business of online advertising has continued to morph into something none of us could have expected in the aughts, we still have one thing that persists – cynicism.
Google has announced that they will not deprecate cookies, but instead will offer user opt-out (or opt-in? We still don’t know) as a choice. Some would make adjacency arguments to other company’s features, as we’re wont to do. Humans love analogies. However, Google is in a unique position with so much of their revenue relying on advertising efficacy, that similarities are unlikely. One point of clarity is that the Privacy Sandbox has thus far crumbled under the pressure of a tidal wave of regulatory scrutiny and poor testing metrics, making it a risky candidate to maintain a healthy advertising monetization framework. So, what should they do?
Google Announces User Choice
What do we know?
Thus far, the only thing we have is history, knowing Google’s business practices and yesterday’s blog post from the Privacy Sandbox VP, Anthony Chavez. One other thing we know is that Privacy Sandbox is not a part of the Google Marketing Platform (GMP) where the ads business resides. This is an important factor when considering what are the implications of this move. Most importantly, the developer team still needs more time to iron out the kinks – ad complexity in the short-run be damned.
Google’s practice in business has long been to own the entire workflow. You see it in their horizontal integration (I just made that phrase up) of the entire ad stack from ad server to creative studio. Privacy Sandbox follows the same ethos. There is an API for every imaginable item. This is because the Privacy Sandbox is a closed ecosystem tool. That’s right. Google’s plan was to create a hedged garden where they didn’t own the inventory, but did own the browser, data, and monetization technology in a closed loop they controlled. Their inability to get publishers on board – mainly with Topics (audience targeting) and Protected Audience (retargeting), is a massive blow to the preferred business practices of Google.
In synopsis, Chavez states in the announcement that Google is looking to create a thriving advertising marketplace that drives an internet economy that enables people to access content with web supported revenue. Then, a very important sentence is written about Google’s desire around the ad ecosystem.
Early testing from ad tech companies, including Google, has indicated that the Privacy Sandbox APIs have the potential to achieve these outcomes.
In other words, the performance is better than nothing but far behind current methods.
Let’s focus on potential. Potential doesn’t secure the capability to maintain the upward momentum of a $237.86 billion ads business. Potential does not guarantee the health of a thriving economic business model. It is fair to say that the risk of cookie deprecation is too great, considering that lackluster results from testing and the fear of scaling a technology that puts more compute requirements on the device, to leave it up to potential. Known in other circles as, ‘a house with good bones,’ or ‘a talented rookie with a raw skill set.’ No, this will not do for the biggest ad business on the planet.
What don’t we know?
There is a lot left to the imagination. Namely, how will the opt-out work, how will Chrome maintain parallel ad frameworks, and what benefits will consumers – publishers, advertisers, the public – get from this choice?
Right now, the opt-in/out is opaque. This is likely because Google has yet to endorse a particular type of functionality. However, if you think this is to incentivize opting out, then I have some beachfront property in Nebraska to sell you. Google has zero incentive to make opt-in language as negative as Apple did. Two reasons:
- As previously stated, Google’s main revenue stream comes from the advertising department and Search is under pressure from AI. They need display and video to thrive, and force feeding a technology none of their partners wants to use is not in service of that fact. Thus, until they fix the Sandbox they want users to opt-in. The choice is acquiescence to the realities of the data privacy moment.
- Google would prefer to use cookies! The Privacy Sandbox has always been a contrivance. Do you know Google used to maintain as many as five identity spaces? Google loves ID’s. Cookies, for all their flaws, represent a ubiquitous ID they could map to one – or many – of their ID spaces when a user was not authenticated in the Google ecosystem. Fundamentally, Google’s business runs on identification.
We also still don’t know just how this will functionally work. Google was prepared to make all Ad Sense (network), DoubleClick (DSP), and YouTube (video) inventory subject to the laws of Privacy Sandbox land, but didn’t have a solution for truly open internet inventory beyond their fledgling clean room collaboration, PAIR, with LiveRamp. The current proposal seems to be even more chaotic. Google, which has had opt-out flags since GDPR, now has to extend that to every opt-in/out for every publisher with a visitor coming to their page via Chrome. This is not the app world, which is inherently a closed ecosystem requiring devs follow coding guidelines set up by the marketplace. This is the (semi) open web! Will it be on the publisher to manage how every visitor is targeted? Some will receive a Topics based ad while others can be audience targeted via their cookie? How will this interface with Double Click for Publishers? What happens if I login or sign up at the publisher level, but check an opt-out of targeting box at the browser level? Does this supersede user preference to be identified by the publisher?
Needless to say, this raises a mountainous sized paper stack by the FAQ inbox.
There is no discernable benefit to any constituents besides Google, with this announcement. They state they want a thriving economy. What they’ll get is a confused consumer. The publisher will be under even more pressure by bifurcating the user preference for targeting at the browser level, rather than by publisher. The agency has already spent so much time, money, and mental resource on trying to move advertisers up the maturity curve that many are just as likely to forego this whole charade via contextual targeting and use of 1PD only. Thus, cutting Google’s targeting options out of the ad dollar waterfall. And the public consumer will have yet more gates before they get to their preferred content.
Final Thoughts
It would be gratifying to take a shot at Google’s Chrome Team. However, this is a rational decision given their business model. The one thing to question, which takes us back to the word cynicism, is time. Advertisers have not taken the time to develop mature first party data strategies. Publisher authentication functionality is awful and needs more time to mature. Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox needs more time, as evidenced by the repeated can kicking that has taken place over the years.
Advertisers will be left with a choice of whether to focus on audience based strategies with cookies, alternative ID’s, PII (direct and modeled audience), context, or Sandbox. The options are dizzying. Each strategy requires different skill sets. It should be no surprise when advertisers opt for context and maybe a 1PD data match with pubs and DSP through internet identity systems like OpenID.
Finally, it’s clear this is a stall tactic. Google’s out of moves. The technical amendments to the framework, along with the multiple product releases that have failed has left Google no option but to give themselves more time. It may sound cynical, but usually the simplest explanation is the most correct. In this case, we can only wait to see how the opt-ins are going to be handled so the ad tech ecosystem can make informed decisions about how they’ll proceed with creating attribution efficiencies through targeting on Chrome. This publications’ bet is that there will be a trend toward simplicity after this last few years of exponentially accelerated complexity.
The Chrome and Privacy Sandbox Teams would do well to note this. If there is much more thrashing, advertisers may begin to look for the methadone to the Google narcotic.
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