Google Backs Privacy Sandbox Despite Cookie Pivot

When Google announced in July that it was not deprecating third-party cookies on the web, the industry breathed a sigh of relief. And a groan. For four years, the industry has been preparing for the cookieless future, including testing Google’s suite of privacy-enhancing technologies, Privacy Sandbox. The July announcement made it seem as if some of that work might be for naught (and some firms have already moved resources away from testing Privacy Sandbox). On stage at ADWEEK House last week, Barb Smith, director of privacy sandbox product partnerships at Google, confirmed to the audience that Google remained committed to Privacy Sandbox. While Smith didn’t provide further details on Google’s new plan, which will involve offering users a prompt to give them more choice on whether to be tracked by cookies, she did emphasize that these decisions are separate from the company’s work on Privacy Sandbox technology, which will continue. “Whatever that experience looks like, how it behaves, we can all expect that there will be fewer cookies available on the web and in Chrome in the future, and that's what we should be planning for,” Smith said. Privacy Sandbox progress report Smith shared the stage with Mihir Nanavati, chief innovation and ecosystem officer at adtech firm NextRoll, who sponsored the session and has been heavily invested in testing Privacy Sandbox. Nanavati said the company has actually accelerated its involvement and support for Privacy Sandbox tech, but that doesn’t mean the tech always performs. “Performance is mediocre, to be honest, relative to when we use third-party cookies,” Nanavati said, noting pricing and latency still compare unfavorably to cookies. “But that is to be expected. We're early in this stage. Our biggest issue that we found is we have very limited supply.” Performance still lags because more publishers and buyers need to test cookieless tech to make the auctions comparable to those powered by third-party cookies, he said. Plus, marketers adapting to a truly privacy-first advertising ecosystem need to temper their expectations. “If you are expecting to see, for example, did Mihir click on an ad? That's not going to happen,” Nanavati said. Something better than cookies? Nanavati said that Privacy Sandbox can be used for new advertising use cases beyond standard functionalities like retargeting and measurement. For example, a B2B product can use interest group targeting within Privacy Sandbox to find audiences of decision-makers with a particular title or intent, he said. “Privacy Sandbox allows us to unlock new use cases that we had not anticipated before,” he said. Smith noted that cookies as a technology were retrofitted, not designed, for the needs of advertisers. Their replacement could serve marketers better. “Cookies were not built for advertising. They weren't purpose-built for anything really,” Smith said. “That's one of the exciting things about the approach now with Privacy Sandbox and other privacy-enhancing technologies being developed."

Advertising Week

Google Is Committed to Privacy Sandbox Despite Pivoting on Cookie Deprecation

At ADWEEK House, Barb Smith, director of privacy sandbox product partnerships at Google, confirmed that the company sees privacy-enhancing adtech as a part of the future

Catherine Perloff

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Catherine Perloff