Significant changes are coming to online advertising as Google has decided to stop selling ads based on users browsing history across multiple websites.
Google’s parent company Alphabet said that next year it plans to stop using or investing in tracking technologies that uniquely identify web users’ presence from site to site as they move across the internet.
“People shouldn’t have to accept being tracked across the web in order to get the benefits of relevant advertising. And advertisers don’t need to track individual consumers across the web to get the performance benefits of digital advertising,” said the company on its website.
As the world’s biggest digital advertising company, Alphabet could help move other companies in the industry away from the use of such individualized tracking. The use of individualized tracking through third-party cookies has drawn major criticism from privacy advocates and has eroded trust between tech companies and users.
As part of Google’s announcement, the company claimed that 72% of people feel that almost all of what they do online is tracked by advertisers, technology firms, or other companies. 81% of people say that the potential risks they face because of data collection outweigh the benefits.
Following the phase-out of cookies, Google has committed to not building alternate identifiers to track individuals as they move across the web, nor will the company use any alternate identifiers in its products. Google recognized that other companies might use methods to track users across the internet, but the company does not believe those methods to be viable long-term.
“We don’t believe these solutions will meet rising consumer expectations for privacy, nor will they stand up to rapidly evolving regulatory restrictions, and therefore aren’t a sustainable long-term investment. Instead, our web products will be powered by privacy-preserving APIs which prevent individual tracking while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers,” announced Google.
One of the APIs the company may shift to deliver relevant ads to its users is “Federated Learning Cohorts API” or FLoC. FloC effectively hides users “in the crowd” and uses on-device processing to keep a person’s web history private on the browser.
In testing of FloC, Google found that advertisers can expect to see at least 95% of the conversions per dollar spent compared to cookie-based advertising.
The changing ad policy is not the only new development for Google to happen as the Arizona House of Representatives passed a bill that will require app stores to allow app makers to use their own payment processing software.
The law is a major setback for both Google and Apple, who have opposed the bill. Apple’s App Store and Google’s Google Play app store both take 30% of sales of digital goods from apps downloaded through their platforms.
“The Coalition for App Fairness is pleased to see the House passage of HB 2005, which will encourage business innovation in Arizona and protect consumer choice. While this is cause for celebration, it is only a first step toward achieving a truly level playing field for all,” said Meghan DiMuzio, executive director for the Coalition for App Fairness.
