Publishers Will Innovate Away from Google's Privacy Sandbox

Google continues to show that they live in a different version of reality than the companies working in the open web. After their first attempt at a new privacy sandbox, PIGIN, they recently introduced TURTLEDOVE. The specs describe an API where the browser stores the advertiser's interpretation of a user's interests, rather than the advertiser storing it. In this case, interest data is generated and remains local on the browser. TURTLEDOVE is designed to let advertisers target against those interests without being able to take that data and combine it with other information. This would keep the data potentially safer than if it were sent through current digital advertising channels, but brands wouldn’t own it and couldn’t do anything with it. This solution offers too little, too late. Perhaps Google hasn’t noticed the hundreds of new innovations to replace third-party data due to mounting privacy regulations. Or maybe they’re not noticing how many brands are building up their own first- and second-party data strategies. Or, it could be that Google doesn’t notice the increase in PMP and preferred guaranteed deals (which will only gain speed as OTT enters the fray), which effectively decrease the value of the open exchange. Google claims to want to preserve targeted advertising while also increasing consumer privacy, but is neglecting to notice how the market is actually going to work in two years. The Publisher Problem Publishers face a problem when they evaluate TURTLEDOVE and the myriad other new targeting and identity solutions that are emerging as cookies go away. Some solutions will thrive and scale, and others won’t. It looks like LiveRamp is gaining traction, which makes sense – they funnel massive amounts of data back and forth for nearly every segment of the market: buyers, sellers, platforms, data owners, etc. LiveRamp’s solution also increases a buyer’s ability to combine data into larger insights – the opposite of Google’s solution. Publishers see a big opportunity in front of them. As third-party segments fade, publishers can fill the gap with their own insights, new partner data, and new models. The ones that already have a user profile, consent, and a log in are practically foaming at the mouth to share that data with advertisers. For publishers who haven’t already made the move to a login state, they now have clear future revenue potential to consider when making that decision. Google’s solution seems to ignore the publisher data opportunity entirely. Brand Momentum Is for First Party Advertisers have spent the last five years in-housing their data, and they are unlikely to reverse that trend because of Google’s privacy sandbox. Google is enormous, and so there will be plenty of money spent on the platform regardless. However, brands need to either bring their own data, or be extremely confident that Google’s version of browser-based segmentation is valuable. Assuming that Google offers some element of probabilistic intent targeting, brands will need the granularity and intent-based data they are used to. “Likes cars” isn’t going to cut it. Brands need to target “in-market Subaru drivers.” And the solution needs to scale. And they’ll want that targeting to be frequency capped across other media buys. It starts getting messy real quick. A Change to the Open Exchange We’re seeing a surge in PMP and PG deals as brands work to gain more control over their programmatic buys. They want transparency, pricing power, and content quality. It’s likely that in time more publishers will start to sell their data to brands and create direct buying relationships on platforms that allow them to. With the GDPR and CCPA, the open exchange looks even less attractive. It’s likely that in the next two years it becomes nearly impossible to find quality inventory on the open exchange, and the market there shrinks considerably. In fact, Google’s privacy sandbox may be the only thing that’s left of it. If that is the case, the quality of their browser-based segments would speak for themselves. Buyers could decide if the price matches the performance, but it could end up isolating Google from the rest of the open web. Publishers will likely stay away, not wanting to limit their ability to trade at a higher price, and with data, with their brand clients. The appeal of the open exchange has been the ability to get massive audience targeting scale. It was always a precarious situation. A lot of the content and data was of low quality. The market is maturing away from the open exchange, and a Google privacy sandbox isn’t going to change that.

Ad Tech Industry News

Publishers Will Innovate Away from Google's Privacy Sandbox

Edwin Fu

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Edwin Fu