Finally Some Clarity Around Google Ads’ Latest Privacy Announcements

Google Ads’ privacy blog post last week and the ensuing headlines left most of us with more questions than answers. Yes, most expected Google Ads products to integrate with Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox (FLoC, FLEDGE and the reporting APIs). Still, IAB Tech Lab received hundreds of inbounds all expressing confusion, as did others in the industry. The incoming questions fall into four categories. What does the March 3, 2021 announcement mean for:

Users
Publishers
Advertisers
Non-Google Ad Tech

Today, Google provided two forms of clarification: a blog post and an “on-stage” interview with IAB Tech Lab CEO Dennis Buchheim, Google Ad Manager Group Product Manager, Deepti Bhatnagar and Google Ads Group Product Manager for User Trust and Privacy, Chetna Bindra at IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting (ALM). The key takeaways are:

Google Ads are walking away from granular, open web user tracking, and going all in on Privacy Sandbox and first-party data. Google Ads’ data collection practices will evolve to no longer granularly track audiences across the open web, and the ad buying products they make available to advertisers will no longer utilize audience profiles generated, from or augmented by, open web user identifiers.
Google will support publishers who wish to connect their audiences to advertisers’ audiences, with whom they have a direct relationship. They will do this only through Authorized Buyers and Open Bidding. Their sell-side products will enable those connections in a secure way, with full publisher control, and without the ability for Google to read or decrypt those signals.
Google supports Tech Lab’s efforts to provide standards for publisher first-party audience and contextual signals passed to buyers for programmatic buying, and agrees that technical accountability is critical to preserve core privacy tenants across the supply chain.

Now let’s further unpack these details for you below, and please be sure to read Google’s latest blog post and watch the Google Ads team’s ALM interview with Dennis Buchheim once it’s available in video on-demand. All of what follows is drawn from those two public sources, and based on the timeline for when Chrome removes third-party cookies.

Users

On Google Owned-and-Operated Sites & Apps

Once third-party cookies are disabled by default on Chrome, users visiting Google’s owned-and-operated sites will continue to receive granularly targeted ads based on users direct engagement with those sites. This includes targeting based on the site/page the user is on, as well as inclusion within Google-derived audience segments. Targeting (and subsequent measurement) can also be facilitated by advertiser audiences directly linked to Google audiences via Google’s ad tech stack which includes, but is not limited to Google Ads Data Hub, Google Ad Manager and DV360.

On Other Non-Google Sites

Once third-party cookies are disabled by default on Chrome, Google will no longer track users across the web. Users visiting non-Google sites will see granularly targeted ads less often,and any targeting will either have resulted from that publisher’s first-party data, Google’s Privacy Sandbox technology, or the direct three-way relationship among user, publisher, AND advertiser.

Publishers

Monetizing with Google Demand

Once third-party cookies are disabled by default, publishers monetizing user visits with Google Ads’ programmatic demand may earn advertising revenues in two ways:

Publisher first-party data: Publishers may use their direct user engagement data to create audiences offered via Google’s ad buying products, including publisher-defined audience segments and contextual targeting. This includes private and open auction selling.
Privacy Sandbox (FLEDGE, FLoC, etc.): This is the only other way traditional, identifier-based use cases and audience buying will be available through Google’s ad buying products.

Summary: Traditional identifier-based use cases on open web inventory from Google-sourced programmatic demand will only be enabled through new Chrome Privacy Sandbox APIs or publisher first-party data that does not leave the publisher.

Monetizing with non-Google Demand

Publishers monetizing with non-Google programmatic demand, even when using Google Ad Manager as an ad server, will have the above opportunities at their disposal, plus a third opportunity:

Publisher linked audiences: Google will allow publishers to share encrypted signals directly with authorized buyers/bidders through Google Ad Manager, with full control. Google will not read or utilize this encrypted signal itself. This use case involves both the publisher and advertiser working with an identity provider to connect their audiences, based on both having a direct relationship with the user sufficient to have earned a user-enabled ID.

Summary: Traditional, identifier based use cases on the open web will be enabled through a mix of new Chrome APIs, publisher audiences and links between publishers’ audiences and advertisers’ audiences.

Advertisers

Buying Google Owned-and-Operated Sites

Today, it is only possible to buy Google Owned-and-Operated (O&O) inventory via Google Ads products and that is not changing to public knowledge. Advertisers buying Google audiences via Google ad buying products will have at least the following opportunities at their disposal:

Onboarding advertiser first-party audiences for targeting or measuring connected to Google’s rich first-party data may continue to do so as they do today using Google’s Ads Data Hub (ADH) and buying through the range of Google products that integrate directly with ADH.
Using Privacy Sandbox (FLEDGE, FLoC, etc.)
Buying on Google-derived contextual categories and/or audience segments, based only on users’ direct engagement with Google sites.

Summary: Advertisers can buy granular Google O&O audiences, Privacy Sandbox facilitated audiences and their own advertiser audiences matched across Google sites. Ad buying products and audiences from Google will no longer offer audience profiles generated from or augmented by open web user data and behaviors except those captured via FLoC and FLEDGE.

Buying the Open Web

Once third-party cookies are disabled by default, Google’s ad buying products will not utilize any granular, cross-site tracking or targeting for open web buys. The audience targeting available to advertisers buying non-Google owned and operated sites will be:

Publisher first-party data: Publishers may use their direct user engagement data to create audiences offered via Google’s ad buying products, including publisher-defined audiences and contextual targeting. This includes private and open auction buying.
Privacy Sandbox (FLEDGE, FLoC, etc.): This is the only other way traditional identifier-based use cases and audience buying will be available through Google’s ad buying products.

Summary: For open web, Google’s ad buying products are “going all in” on Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox APIs, as well as publisher’s direct first-party relationships with their users and advertisers (buying through Authorized Buyers, and walking away from granular, cross-site tracking across the web. It’s unclear if/how Google will buy open web on non-Chrome browsers that do not support Privacy Sandbox advertising APIs).

Non-Google Ad Tech

Non-Google ad tech has a green field now. We’re hopeful companies do not double-down on the status quo as a result of Google’s now clearer path, but instead embrace privacy-first change based on consistent transparency and control to users, honored reliably (and demonstrated through accountability data). This includes a mix of scenarios we laid out this Tuesday, March 9, at ALM. The ball is in your court, ad tech.

Unlinked First-Party Audiences

Google Ad Manager will facilitate many types of buying and selling on publishers’ first-party data. It just won’t link publisher audiences to advertisers’ using Google’s buy-side products.
Non-Google ad tech buying open web inventory through Google’s sell-side products will receive granular, advertiser linkable identifiers where publishers send them (unclear what, if any, Google policies this will be subject to).
There is reason to hope Google sell-side products will adopt Tech Lab’s new Taxonomy and Data Transparency Standards to Support Seller-defined Audience and Context Signaling in public comment now.
It is unclear if and how Google’s policies will evolve for Prebid line items.

Summary: Ad tech companies will continue to see unlinked, first-party audience opportunities within inventory connected to Google sell side products.

Browser/OS-linked Audiences

Non-Google ad tech will determine whether or not to integrate with Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox APIs (some yet to ship).
Non-Google ad tech seeking Google demand will likely see more by integrating with Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox APIs, such as FLoC and FLEDGE (the still hotly debated reporting APIs won’t be a requisite for demand).
Non-Google ad tech does not have access to Google O&O supply today and nothing about the recent announcements appears to change that.
Non-Google ad tech connected to open web supply coming through Google sell-side products will in some cases see granular identifiers come through, when publishers decide to send them, even when also using a Privacy Sandbox advertising API.
Non-Google ad tech connected to open web supply coming through Google sell-side products will be able to buy that supply in a semi-granularly targeted and delayed, aggregated, measured way with FLEDGE, FLoC and the reporting APIs.

Summary: Ad tech companies may choose whether to integrate with Chrome Privacy Sandbox advertising APIs. Doing so will result in more demand/supply opportunities.

Linked 1:1 Audiences

Non-Google ad tech connected to open web supply coming through Google sell-side products will in some cases see granular identifiers come through, when publishers decide to send them.

Summary: Google isn’t stopping publishers using Google Ad Manager (GAM) from using ID resolution services to link advertiser audiences to publishers’ when the impression leaves Google Ads products. See Tech Lab’s Responsible Addressability RFC portfolio for best practices.

Now What?

We still call on Google Ads to provide more detail in writing. You can too! Today’s blog post is a step in the right direction. However, we think everyone would prefer for users, publishers, advertisers and ad tech not to have to read between the lines on issues so critical to efficient, effective digital advertising and privacy in general.

If you don’t work for Google, and you fall into one of the category breakdowns above, now is the time to educate yourself on these three key areas you should plan for as more of today’s granular identifiers disappear.