Privacy Sandbox

Last updated: October 31, 2024

Proprietary Ad Systems Industry Requirements

Following changes to the Privacy Sandbox timeline after the publication of the Fit Gap Analysis, IAB Tech Lab widened the remit of the Privacy Sandbox Task Force to include all Proprietary Ad Systems built by Platforms and Operating Systems. This resulted in the renaming of the Task Force to being the Private Ad Systems Task Force, with an updated charter. On October 31, 2024, the group published the Digital Advertising Industry Requirements: System Requirements for Proprietary Ad Systems Built by Platforms and OS Providers. 

Privacy Sandbox Assessment

Privacy Sandbox is a Chrome and Android framework developed by Google that aims to provide audience activation and programmatic auctioning features as a potential alternative to third party cookies while enhancing user privacy. It includes an extensive set of changes, features, and techniques which affect nearly every aspect of the digital advertising transaction and operational process. These changes include, but are not limited to:

  • Removal of third party cookies
  • Removal of access to IP address
  • Limitations on communication between an ad’s creative and the publisher’s page
  • Limitations in the ability to add multiple dimensions to reports
  • Noise and delay in advertising reports
  • Removal of link decoration
  • Removal of device identifiers
  • Contraction in user agent data

…And more

While the Privacy Sandbox removes many Chrome and Android features which have been leveraged by publishers and advertisers to build a thriving content monetization ecosystem, it introduces a new set of features aimed to fill the gap in functionality.

These features include, but are not limited to:

  • On-device auctions
  • Interest Groups for third parties to assign an audience segment to a user
  • Fenced Frames to enhance the privacy of traditional iframes
  • Aggregated and noised reporting mechanisms
  • Attestation systems to differentiate between human and bot traffic
  • Cohorting users into groups
  • Private Attribution

About the Privacy Sandbox Task Force

The Privacy Sandbox Task Force is an initiative within IAB’s Tech Lab which brought together esteemed product development leaders across the industry to study and evaluate the implications in the deployment of Google’s Privacy Sandbox. 

Today the Task Force released its final deliverable- the fit gap analysis of Privacy Sandbox APIs for digital advertising, to provide the industry with a baseline understanding of the level of support for the most fundamental and common use cases by the new set of Google Chrome APIs based on the Public Comment feedback.

The fit gap analysis was open for public comment from February 6, 2024 until March 22, 2024. You can view the change log from the original analysis here.

The roadmap of the Task Force includes:

  • Ongoing Privacy Sandbox Use Case Fit Gap Assessment which documents a large number of foundational use cases, and determines their feasibility within Sandbox in the short and long term. It provides an overview of how each use case can/cannot be achieved with the Sandbox features  with detailed analysis and references to Sandbox documentation.
  • Sandbox Cookbooks will aim to provide product leaders with more exact, step-by-step instructions as to how to maximize Sandbox features to enable various marketing workflows.

Additional Resources