A week ago Google announced plans that it is bringing Privacy Sandbox effort to Android.
Google said: “Privacy Sandbox will introduce new technology that operates without cross-app identifiers – including Advertising ID. This helps apps remain free through ads while your data stays protected.”
Privacy Sandbox also aims to limit covert tracking and collection of user data, including safer ways for apps to integrate with third-party developers.
Released in 2019, Google’s approach was introduced right after Google announced it would stop detesting third party cookies in the Chrome browser.
The Privacy Sandbox proposal is focussed on:
Showing relevant content and ads
Google’s Topics API uses the best feature of Interest-based advertising and blends with Contextual Advertising. So with Topics API infers coarse-grained interest signals on-device based on a user's app usage. These signals, called topics, will be shared with advertisers, supporting IBA use cases without requiring tracking of individual users across apps.
A topic is a human-readable topic of interest and is part of the taxonomy. Google says taxonomy will be human-curated so that sensitive topics are not part of the taxonomy. This taxonomy will be tailored to the categories of ads that can be shown on mobile apps on Android.
Supporting custom audiences targeting using FLEDGE. Custome audience targeting or remarketing with FLEDGE support common interaction-based use cases in ways that limit the sharing of both identifiers across apps and a user's app interaction information with third parties.
With Fledge the platform manages and stores this audience list on the device, limiting the sharing with third parties.
Attribution Reporting
The Attribution Reporting API is designed to provide improved user privacy by removing the reliance on cross-party user identifiers, and to support key use cases for attribution and conversion measurement across apps and the web.
Additionally, the Attribution Reporting will also support Optimization and Invalid Activity Detection.
SDK Runtime - limit covert tracking
From Android 13, Google plans to add a new platform capability that allows third-party SDKs to run in a dedicated runtime environment called the SDK Runtime. The SDK Runtime provides the following stronger safeguards and guarantees around user data collection and sharing:
A modified execution environment
Well-defined permissions and data access rights for SDKs
Google’s goal is to reduce undisclosed access and sharing of a user's app data by third-party SDKs and reduce undisclosed tracking of a user's app usage by third-party SDKs by limiting unique, persistent identifiers from being accessed by SDKs.
Additionally, help app developers better account for the data access and sharing practices of their app. Preventing invalid traffic and ad fraud is also one of the goals.
Google documents linked with each feature has more technical details that are worth the read for mightier brains.
The implementation will take its own sweet time but Google is following the footsteps of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency(ATT) privacy framework.
The change that has been rolled out with iOS14 requires developers to collect an explicit opt-in from users before accessing their IDFA.
Impact on Meta’s Facebook
First Apple and now Google has made things worse for Meta. In a historically bad quarter, Meta shared that it stands to lose $10 billion this year due to the change Apple made with iOS14.
According to early reports, over 95% of iPhone users who had downloaded the update were opting out of ad tracking — hence the prediction that Facebook's ad revenue will take a $10 billion hit in the coming year.
To overcome Apple’s ATT privacy framework - Facebook has launched a set of measures. However, limitations on targetting and reporting will be there.
Meanwhile, Facebook has also relooked at the campaign objectives and it has made it to six from eleven. Outcome-Driven Ad Experiences (ODAX) is the new way of defining your campaign objectives.
Additionally, Facebook is slowly moving away from a deep level of Interest-based targeting and it is now asking to have a broader level of targeting. Recently it has removed thousands of detailed targeting options from the Facebook Ad Manager.
This is a concern for marketers and specially Nonprofits who have been largely dependent on Facebook. The reliance on first-party data increases and so does the focus on lookalike and custom audiences.
Now with Google also following the same lines, Indian marketers and NGOs have to get their things sorted.
According to Datareportal:
98.5% of Facebook’s audience aged 18+ accessed the platform via a mobile phone in July 2021
81.8% of Facebook’s mobile users aged 18+ accessed the platform via an app on an Android device in July 2021
India has at least 349 million active Facebook users and leads the race.
According to State of Mobile 2022: Tiktok’s ban in India helped Meta; with engagement deepening in both Facebook and Instagram by 15% and 35% respectively.
Facebook has been the go-to platform for Indian NGOs’ digital fundraising. The current environment limits the capabilities to a certain degree and the world of digital advertising is also evolving.
This also means that businesses will have to rely more on first-party data, do the more broad level of targeting when it comes to interest-based targeting, creating Custom Audiences and last but not least creating engaging creatives.
All said and done Meta’s Facebook is still India’s biggest market and the platform still provides immense possibilities for brand engagement and conversion or sales.
P.S. Pradakshina - my personal journey within is my new newsletter.
“Who Am I” my first story talks about how my quest has led me to Arunachala, Tiruvannamalai. Read it when you have time and subscribe if you find value.