Google’s third-party cookie deprecation has finally arrived to spell a new era in The Privacy Sandbox. From today (4 January 2024), Google Chrome is disabling third-party cookies for 1% of the users before completely stopping it in Q3 2024. Publishers and website owners who use third-party cookies to improve the quality of their services and content would now have to look out for alternative channels to experiment with their advertising efforts. Google has already launched a range of APIs to offset third-party cookies for identity tracking, advertising, and privacy management. In our Google third-party cookies deprecation series, global adtech leaders spoke to us about the consequences of this milestone event.

What is Google’s Third-Party Cookies Deprecation?

Google’s third-party cookies deprecation is part of the company’s Privacy Sandbox initiative. The Privacy Sandbox is a major development in the advertising landscape that supports the need to improve people’s online privacy while they use digital services without interruption. This initiative aims to reduce cross-site and cross-app tracking when users browse the internet for content, services, and jobs. By deprecating third-party cookies in Google, users can continue to enjoy an enriching browser experience without worrying about privacy. For publishers, this effort would ensure they can offer their content for free on sites and apps. Moreover, intrusive app trackers will become a thing of the past in 2024 once 100% third-party cookies deprecation takes effect. To discuss more, adtech leaders highlight the context of third-party cookie deprecation applied to different digital businesses.

Effects on Publishing Business

According to a recent report by PrimeAudience, 88% of marketers feel prepared for the deprecation of cookies. 56% of marketers are already testing for the cookieless future in 2024. 

Alexandra Theriault, Chief Growth Officer, Lotame, a data solutions company said, “30-50% of the web already blocks third-party cookies in Safari and Firefox by default, and that has yet to spur meaningful adoption of third-party cookieless solutions from brands and agencies. Although universal IDs have been adopted by 10s of thousands of publishers globally (as cited by sincera.io), the demand from agencies and brands to leverage these alternative solutions is meager. Google adding 1% of their piece of the pie isn’t going to drive the intended reaction necessary to prepare the industry for the end of the year. Google’s watered-down targeting capabilities that may offer to target are a far cry from the precision agencies and brands are accustomed to. The result will be worse-performing campaigns, a hit to most publisher’s yield, and less relevant ads for consumers.”

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Testing Cookieless Solutions in 2024

Eli Heath, Head of Identity – Lotame, added, “It’s important to note that this change affects only 1% of browsers, which is relatively minor considering that 30% of browsers, such as Safari and Firefox, already do not support third-party cookies. This small percentage is unlikely to drive significant changes among buyers, as DSPs will simply adjust their traffic optimization strategies for Chrome browsers that still use cookies. However, this development should serve as a wake-up call to re-energize and intensify efforts in testing cookieless solutions, especially by expanding the scope to include Chrome browsers. This testing phase is crucial. If we can identify and isolate the 1% of impacted Chrome browsers, it could provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of post-cookie solutions. This includes aspects of targeting and measurement in a Chrome environment without third-party cookies, building on the initial learnings we’ve already gleaned from Safari and Firefox.”

Jeremy added, “Lastly, personalization of the consumer ad experience will take a hit leading to more generic and less targeted messaging and creative. If Google does end up completely deprecating cookie tracking, this opens up the opportunity for innovation in the industry for new solutions focused on targeting, measurement, and attribution. In addition, there will be an increased focus on privacy which will be tied to even more regulation focused on data protection.

Should Google move forward with deprecating third-party cookies, it will substantially impact both ad tech providers and advertisers who will once again have to navigate and innovate to win. I believe this to be very dependent on how this 1% deprecation test will impact Google’s ad revenue. If it takes a hit, we could see further delays in the full rollout based on their current timeline.”

Google Tracking Protection for digital advertising

Mateusz Jedrocha, VP, of Branding Solutions – Adlook (cookieless and deep-learning focused DSP) mentioned the importance of Google Tracking Protection for digital advertising. Mateusz said, “The introduction of Tracking Protection by Google Chrome, a browser commanding a significant 64% of the market share, marks a pivotal moment in digital advertising. This move is particularly impactful for us at Adlook, where we focus on branding solutions. This development presents both a challenge and an opportunity in how we engage with consumers globally. We view the initial 1% deprecation of cookies as a crucial first step in assessing the viability of a cookieless environment. This phase allows us to perform essential tests and begin redefining our benchmarks and delivery metrics for branding campaigns in a world without third-party cookies. However, we believe that a gradual and transparent expansion of cookieless traffic is necessary for a comprehensive understanding and adaptation to this new landscape.”

Mateusz added, “At Adlook, we are keenly aware of the importance of guiding our clients through the intricacies of the cookieless transition. To this end, we have developed comprehensive Cookieless Transition Frameworks, which are designed to support our clients in navigating this new landscape. These frameworks are based on a phased and tailored approach, allowing for gradual testing and adaptation. Our objective is to facilitate a seamless shift from legacy buying methods to the new ecosystem, which is increasingly powered by Google’s Privacy Sandbox along with a variety of other cookieless solutions.”

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With the first stages of Google’s ‘Cookiegeddon’ less than two months away, digital advertisers are still scrambling to find solutions that will enable them to continue to deliver effective campaigns. Indeed, despite the threat of the deprecation of third-party cookies hanging over the industry for several years, more than 40% of advertisers remain unprepared.

This is quite a damning reflection on the industry. Especially, before the news that Google Chrome would be removing third-party cookies, there was a conspicuous shift toward consumer privacy, with other browsers having waved goodbye to user tracking. Not to mention that GDPR is now over half a decade old.

Nonetheless, it’s not too late for digital advertisers to get all their ducks in a row, and overcome the challenges presented by a privacy-first online experience. Indeed, the end of third-party cookies doesn’t mean the end of effective digital advertising. Instead, it poses an opening for innovative solutions to make the ecosystem a better place for consumers and advertisers alike.

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New age contextual

The new era of digital advertising will see the end of the repetitive, frustrating, low-quality ads that have plagued the lives of consumers for many years. Instead, the conversation has shifted back to the role of creativity and context in driving truly successful advertising. This is thanks to the increasing recognition within the industry of attention and engagement metrics as being the best way to measure the effectiveness of digital advertising. This has helped bring creativity back to the forefront of the industry’s arsenal, having previously been neglected in favor of an approach that favored hyper-targeting over the look and feel of an ad.

Greater penetration of artificial intelligence (AI) into contextual advertising has not only made it far more sophisticated than it once was but much more accessible to all. Technologies now can serve the most relevant creatives to precisely targeted audiences, based on their interests and behaviors, without ever putting the personal data of consumers at risk.

AI technology can analyze millions of web pages in seconds, identifying the brands, products, semantics, and intent associated with those pages and using that information to serve the right ad at the right time. Moreover, AI can harness data in real-time around anything from product lists to sports scores, from weather to train times, within the creative, meaning true relevance can be delivered at the moment.

The combination of this in-depth contextual analysis and heightened creative prowess helps advertisers align their targeting and creativity in real time at an impression level. These ads, with their AI-powered personalization, seamlessly integrate into the user’s browsing and create an experience that drives attention and engagement. No longer will consumers be negatively impacted by low-quality ads lacking relevance.

Advertisers should be experimenting with AI-based solutions now, to help them to not only produce the most visually engaging ads but also to ascertain which creatives would be most relevant to specific audiences and via which channels – all the while maintaining customer privacy.

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Putting Creativity Back On Top

Furthermore, the introduction of automation to the creative process means that brands can navigate the laborious work required to create multiple ads that cater to the different needs of each consumer. Having the technology in place to carry out this essential work means ads can be more easily delivered across the marketing funnel – whether the goal is to raise brand awareness or edge the consumer toward conversion – and return on investment (ROI) can be maximized.

In a world where advertisers are having to adjust to significant changes, the best way to overcome the challenges they are facing is by focusing on contextual relevance and engaging creative that adds to the user’s browsing experience, rather than lowering the quality.

AI-powered technologies exist to ensure that consumers are served the most relevant and appealing ads and help the industry get back to what made people enjoy advertising in the first place. Creativity has always been what truly made advertising special, and now it’s time for it to once again be the number one priority for brands, with AI here to ensure that target audiences truly engage with the ads served to them.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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Lightlytics announced the Lightlytics Google Chrome extension’s general availability. The extension is the world’s first cloud change intelligence extension and will reduce dreaded context switching between AWS tools for cloud operators.

“Context switching between tools and tasks accounts for up to 40% decrease in productivity, and it’s becoming a more acute problem for cloud operators by the day,” said Stav Sitnikov, co-founder and CTO at Lightlytics. “Today, it’s considered normal for an operations team to switch between 5-10 different cloud tools to fully understand and resolve an AWS incident. This results in wasted time and valuable resources. With our new Google Chrome extension, we’re delivering the complete context of resources to operators’ favorite cloud tools. Seeing all relevant configurations, recent changes, traffic, all dependencies, resolve issues quickly and reduces content switching for operators.”

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The Lightlytics Google Chrome extension enriches all web applications (including AWS Console, AWS Cost Explorer, DataDog, VMware CloudHealth, Crowdstrike among others), and provides actionable context on cost, security, availability for each listed resource. The extension doesn’t require any integration with existing tools. A Lightlytics account and Google Chrome are the only requirements for users to start getting all the context they need on their favorite cloud tools.

“The cloud observability, security and cost segments mostly rely on point solutions that only focus on a single aspect of resources, making it extremely time-consuming for operators to complete simple tasks in large scale deployments,” said Liran Roffman, co-founder and VP of engineering at Lightlytics. “Adding configuration, changes, traffic, availability, security and cost context to these applications surfaces all relevant context to operators, and they can take immediate action on the UIs that they know and love. This helps us meet operators on their favorite tools and improve the user experience on these tools in the process.”

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[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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Avast, a leader in digital security and privacy, and a brand of Gen saw an increase in threats using social engineering to steal money, such as refund and invoice fraud and tech support scams, during Q4 of the calendar year 2022. Cybercriminals also remained active in spying and information stealing, with lottery-themed adware campaigns used as a tactic to obtain people’s contact details. Avast threat researchers also discovered zero-day exploits in Google Chrome and Windows. These vulnerabilities have since been patched. These insights are covered in the Avast Q4/2022 Threat Report.

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“At the end of 2022, we have seen an increase in human-centered threats, such as scams tricking people into thinking their computer is infected, or that they have been charged for goods they didn’t order. It’s human nature to react to urgency, fear and try to regain control of issues, and that’s where cybercriminals succeed,” said Jakub Kroustek, Avast Malware Research Director. “When people face surprising pop-up messages or emails, we recommend they stay calm and take a moment to think before they act. Threats are so ubiquitous today that it’s hard for consumers to keep up. It is our mission to help protect people by detecting threats and alerting users before they can do any harm, using the latest AI-based technology.”

Growth in refund and invoice fraud, and tech support scams
The Avast threat labs also saw an increase in tech support scam activity. Top affected countries include the United States, Brazil, Japan, Canada, and France. These scams often start with a pop-up window that alerts people of an alleged malware infection and urges them to call a helpline to resolve the issue. Scammers will convince the caller to set up a remote connection to their computer, opening the door to theft of personal information and money, as the criminals try to access people’s bank accounts or crypto wallets, and ask for a payment for their services.

“We recommend people ignore such pop-up messages and close the window with the escape key, or if that’s not possible, restart their computer,” advises Kroustek. “Also, never give remote access to your computer to somebody you don’t know.”

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The Avast threat labs also saw an uptick in refund and invoice fraud of 14% from October to November 2022, and another increase of 22% in December. Refund fraud works in a comparable way to tech support scams, and often comes in the form of an email that looks like it was sent from a trusted company. People will receive an email including a fake receipt making them believe they were charged for a purchase they didn’t make. People are then tricked into calling a phone number, where an agent asks them to create a remote connection to their computer and open their banking account, so the person can see how the refund is done. The goal of the attacker is to steal the person’s money. In the case of invoice fraud, people, and more often businesses, receive bills for goods or services the business never ordered or received.

“To avoid invoice fraud, people need to pay close attention to invoices they receive. Fraudulent invoices often look legitimate, and people need to verify whether an order really was made, the service received, and whether the sender is truly who they pretend to be,” said Kroustek.

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[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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Dialpad strengthens its offering with Google and increases capabilities with Chrome CTI extension to empower businesses with a modern customer engagement suite

Dialpad, Inc., the industry leader in AI-powered communication and collaboration, announced that Dialpad Ai Contact Center and Dialpad Talk are now Chrome Enterprise Recommended solutions. The inclusion of Dialpad Ai Contact Center and Dialpad Talk in Chrome Enterprise Recommended, and the launch of its Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) Chrome extension for Dialpad, expands on the company’s technology investments with Google. As a Chrome Enterprise Recommended partner, Dialpad’s unified suite of business communications and contact center solutions are optimized for Chrome OS to improve productivity, efficiency, and modernize the user experience for employees and contact center agents whether in office, fully remote, or a hybrid work environment.

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“These solutions join our growing Chrome Enterprise Recommended ecosystem of solutions that meet the expanding needs of businesses as they increase their investment in the web and cloud to achieve superior customer experiences.”

According to leading industry analyst firms Gartner and Forrester, 82% of organizations mandated that employees work remotely at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and companies already operating on cloud systems were significantly more prepared to support employee mobility. Cloud solutions are key to business success as the working world is returning to the office and adopting hybrid work models. Dialpad’s cloud communications and contact center platform, uniquely built on Google Cloud, is changing the workplace landscape and driving the future of global business through easy implementation, quick adoption and an effortless user experience.

“Chrome OS is excited to welcome Dialpad Ai Contact Center and Dialpad Talk as Chrome Enterprise Recommended solutions,” said Gregg Fiddes, Head of Chrome Enterprise Technology Partnerships at Google. “These solutions join our growing Chrome Enterprise Recommended ecosystem of solutions that meet the expanding needs of businesses as they increase their investment in the web and cloud to achieve superior customer experiences.”

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Dialpad also announced its Chrome CTI extension for seamless administration of Dialpad directly from the Chrome browser. The Dialpad Chrome CTI extension allows contact center agents to easily initiate and receive calls directly through a Google Chrome browser with a full suite of call control and messaging functionality through the Dialpad application interface. Built for the modern workforce, and backed by a 100% Uptime Service Level Agreement, Dialpad empowers people and teams to be more effective, engaged — and most importantly, available — to customers from anywhere in the world, on any device.

“Dialpad is proud to earn the Chrome Enterprise Recommended badge from Google and grow our productive partnership with the leading cloud platform and operating system,” said Dialpad founder and CEO, Craig Walker. “Our deep relationship with Google, which extends back to the development of Google Voice and day one of Dialpad, offers a unique perspective on the developing cloud landscape and puts us in the driver’s position to deliver for Google’s customers. We are deeply committed to the Google Chrome ecosystem.”

Dialpad delivers enterprise-grade communications solutions for companies of all sizes delivered through a single pane of glass, from one unified platform, to simplify business communications. Combined with the power of Google, Dialpad solutions are ideally suited for the remote workforces of today and tomorrow, presenting a seamless experience for productive collaboration.

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[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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Data trends continue to shape marketing and advertising campaigns. In the age of digital everything, information overload, and mobile device dependency, data is power, and it’s shaping the way every industry conducts business. In marketing, it’s how we understand, reach and interact with customers and brands — and that’s shifting, too. 

There are an estimated 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created every day, and that number is only growing with the expansion of the Internet of Things. This data defines how marketers advertise, digitize, consolidate and measure success. We’ve highlighted three data trends to prepare for in 2022 and how these trends are impacting the future of marketing. 

Advertising and Privacy

Starting in 2022, Google will begin testing and deploying the early stages of its Privacy Sandbox initiative, which is slated for full implementation in 2023. The project is still in development but intends to remove commonly-used tracking mechanisms, such as third-party cookies, and block covert tracking techniques as we browse the web.  

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The initiative also plans to enable publishers to build sites that respect user privacy.

Website developers and businesses can still reach customers and generate revenue from their sites without relying on intrusive web tracking. While this creates many opportunities for companies to innovate, it’s also unclear how it’ll impact media mixing, marketing strategies, and attribution. 

Considering Google’s Chrome web browser will no longer support third-party cookies when it takes full effect in 2023, marketers will have limited targeting options for advertising campaigns. This may require a bit more creativity with first-party cookies.

Some of these impacts are already being seen in Google Ads switching eligible conversion actions from rules-based attribution models (like “last click” or “linear”) to data-driven attribution. This method gives credit for conversations based on how people engage with your ads and decide to be a customer. It looks at website and store visits and Google Analytics conversions from search (including shopping), YouTube, and display ads. 

This method can also use data to determine which keywords, ads, ad groups, and campaigns have the most impact on reaching your business goals. Data-driven attribution may help close the gaps made by third-party cookie losses and bring data to the forefront. 

Consent management is also changing.

A new data privacy act, the California Privacy Rights Act / CCPA, passed in 2020, is adding stricter regulations for businesses on the use of personal information. This particular act goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2023, but any data collected by companies from Jan. 1, 2022 will be subject to compliance. This will undoubtedly impact marketing businesses around the country, expanding what is meant by “personal information,” requiring companies to allow consumers the ability to opt-out of third-party sharing for advertising purposes and more. 

It’s time to prepare for holistic consumer data collection and consent management approaches rather than a point solution to fill the soon-to-be missing data gaps needed to meet business goals. 

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And finally, advertising relies on consumer targeting, a strategy that must also shift with these data-driven, privacy-oriented evolutions. We’re expecting a shift back to content-based personalization and direct partnerships while continuing with the successes of influencer marketing. Letting consumers know how you’re using their data and for what purpose can help build customer trust and further your personalization goals. 

The Future of Data and “Marchitectures”

With the inevitable death of third-party cookies, we mentioned first-party data, or information your company collects directly from your customers. This data will become increasingly crucial as privacy laws evolve, so consumer trust and proper consumer data collection will help set the stage for advertising techniques going forward. Plus, it’s critical to understand the customer before implementing new digital experiences. 

In fact, a Forrester report found that by “investing in digital experiences and customer insights, organizations can better meet customer expectations.” This will attract and retain customers and increase sales, as 80% of customer experience leaders think that data-driven customer experiences will yield business outcomes. 

Yet respondents pointed to not having the right tools when it comes to keeping up with customer needs during unprecedented challenges. While 82% of respondents say their organization is constantly trying to capture more types of customer data, many are still struggling with making sense of that digital customer data, and don’t have effective customer interaction analytics and channel orchestration capabilities. 

Moving forward, 49% of decision-makers plan to invest in technologies like real-time decision engines and 48% on advanced customer analytics solutions to understand their customer data. Ultimately, the report on data trends concluded that “investing in data and analytics to improve CX delivers business, customer, and brand benefits.”

In 2022, we also expect to see more “marchitecture” designs or marketing technology platforms and services that fit together to meet business goals with data. This method focuses on consolidating data by implementing an architecture of tools and platforms that work together. Data is passed back and forth between these applications to automate actions, and data is maintained, contextualized, and organized within one system stack. Considering digital means more than mobile and web, “marchitectures*” will help marketers meet consumer digital experience expectations where they are.

Outdated Key Performance Indicators Impact Data Trends

Current KPIs are outdated and don’t take into account the current digital world. Forrester predicts that in 2022, 70% of B2B marketers will adopt an “always-on” digital engagement strategy, but 75% of those efforts to create “automated, personalized engagement won’t meet ROI goals due to inadequate buyer insight.”

The pandemic has also changed consumer habits — customers are increasingly online, and marketers must develop new KPIs to assess the effectiveness of marketing campaigns based on increased digitization. According to Amazon, KPIs change over time. Current effective KPIs include lead generation, ROI, and impression shares.

Still, with the shift in consumer habits and data collection, we expect KPIs to evolve quickly in the next couple of years. The end to third-party cookies will also impact current KPIs, making historical campaign data obsolete as the identity landscape changes and consumer profiles are built with new data types. Marketers will need to test new campaigns in a third-party cookieless environment and set new expectations as these shifts will ultimately force a change in thought, technology, and measurement going forward. 

*marchitectures: Marketing Ops + IT Architectures

[To share your insights with us on data trends for 2022, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

The post 3 Data Trends Expected to Impact Marketers in 2022 appeared first on AiThority.

cloudHQ is a work productivity company focusing on email, and is based out of San Francisco, California. This morning, it announced the release of Export Emails to Google Docs by cloudHQ, a brand new solution available in the Google Chrome webstore marketplace.

Export Emails to Google Docs is Chrome extension that works right out of Gmail and lets you select the emails you want to export into Google Docs. This is designed to handle any kind of selection the client wants to export by: sender, keyword, date, or even a whole Gmail Label. The app can collect all the selected emails into a Google Doc that can be commented on and shared with a team.

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Key Features Include:

• Save individual email messages or multiple conversations to Google Docs
• Automatic continuous save of a Gmail Label to Google Docs
• All emails are saved as PDF documents to Google Drive and are organized by: sender, date, keyword, Gmail Label, and more
• All email attachments are saved as well

“There are many reasons why someone wants to save their emails in Google Docs,” said Naomi Assaraf, CMO of cloudHQ.

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“From the human resources department who’s investigating an employee’s email communications, to the legal industry while in legal discovery, or even the education industry where educators want to bring all parent email communications to parent-teacher conferences; we see the necessity of having an organized and shareable report of your emails in Google Docs.”

Export Emails to Google Docs has a free basic plan that includes 10 email exports per month, or a Premium plan with an unlimited amount of email exports per month, along with a dedicated customer service team.

cloudHQ, LLC is located in San Francisco, California, with a distributed workforce of just under 10 people, all working remotely and are dedicated to creating helpful work productivity apps in order to keep everyone productive, one click at a time.

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[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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Cloudflare, Inc., the security, performance, and reliability company helping to build a better Internet, announced it’s the first to implement server support at scale for Early Hints, a new Internet standard that can help speed up websites on its network by 30% or more for free. By working with prominent browsers, Cloudflare will save Internet users time and create faster, more seamless experiences for businesses and their users.

“Everyone should have access to the fastest, most reliable Internet possible and we have built our global network to deliver exactly that,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. “Now we’re taking it a step further and working together with leading browsers like Google Chrome to speed up millions of your favorite websites and applications, completely for free.”

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Today when you visit a website, browsers cannot load it for you until they receive instructions from a server about all of the different elements, like images and text, that need to be displayed. Now Cloudflare is working directly with browsers to save an extra step, and time, for websites to load. Cloudflare will provide early hints to browsers to let them know to start loading critical webpage elements before the server even completes the processing time to load the page. This reduces the time between someone typing in a website URL and that website completing loading. What’s more, Cloudflare is able to do this, without requiring any additional action from the server, due to a combination of the scale and speed of its global network and its use of machine learning.

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“Entrepreneurs know that first impressions matter. Shopify’s own data shows that on average, when a store improves the speed of the first page in the buyer journey by 10%, there is a 7% increase in conversion,” said Colin Bendell, Director Performance Engineering at Shopify. “We see great promise with Early Hints as another tool to help improve the performance and experience for all merchants and customers.”

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[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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In recent years, regulatory scrutiny has mounted against big tech players across areas spanning anti-competitive behavior and inadequate consumer privacy protections. However, Google has fast established itself as an advocate for a more “privacy-first” web driven by its Privacy Sandbox initiative that has been in the works since 2019. Given its dominant position in both the browser and digital advertising space, its moves will unavoidably impact how digital marketers are able to target consumers meaningfully. In the US alone, Google accounts for approximately a third of digital ad spend.

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That said, it should come as no surprise that there has been much chatter on Google’s recent trials of cohort-based targeting as part of an effort known as Federated Learning of Cohorts, or FLoC — one of its proposals to help marketers transition towards a cookies-less ecosystem.  FLoC creates cohorts of users who have similar interests, allowing advertisers to target them in groups while protecting the anonymity of each individual user. During its initial phase of testing, Google contended that FLoC could bring at least 95 percent of conversions per dollar spent when compared against cookie-based targeting.

While it sounds promising, Google has hit its fair share of roadblocks as it continues on its journey to make FLoC the new industry standard for the advertising ecosystem. Let’s look at why FLoC is facing so much resistance, how cohort-based targeting mechanisms can be strengthened, and the road ahead for privacy-compliant advertising industry.

Why Other Browsers Said “No Thanks” to FLoC

While accounting for almost 65.3 percent of the browser market, Google has yet to convince other browsers to adopt the open-source FLoC. Responses have been nothing short of critical, with privacy-centric Brave dubbing FLoC “a step in the wrong direction” for many reasons, but most of all citing that it should be opt-in by design. Meanwhile, Vivaldi has argued that the decision to render FLoC as an industry-standard was a “monopolistic” play on Google’s part. Larger players, including  Mozilla and Opera have more or less expressed the same.

As a whole, a running thread of consensus is the way in which FLoC is designed to place mounting responsibilities on the browser that adopts the technology. If not properly implemented and managed, sensitive user information will still be at risk of being leaked to other parties.

Why has a proposal that was looking to build a privacy-first web met with so much criticism? This brings us to the next point.

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FLoC Has Raised Lawmakers’ Eyebrows in the EU

For the majority of privacy advocates, consumer privacy protection directives in the EU have been largely touted as the industry standard with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) serving as an anchor piece of legislation that has informed other privacy frameworks since it was first enacted.

This past March, Google announced that FLoC trials in the EU were delayed following privacy concerns raised by regulators in Germany, France, and Belgium. Though intended to substitute invasive consumer tracking practices, the fact that Google grouped users into cohorts without actually obtaining their content did not sit well with regulators in the bloc. If you’re located outside of Europe, there’s a small chance that you have been selected for FLoC trial as well and you might not even know it. If you’re curious, head to this website by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to check if your Chrome browser has been added to a cohort.

Furthermore, it’s not been determined which entity will act as the data controller or data processor as users browsing activities are added to the cohorts. The lack of clarity in ownership and consent acquisition has put FLoC at odds with the stringent requirements stipulated in the GDPR.

Get Ready for the Age of Data Deprecation

However, until the industry finds a way to seamlessly integrate and record all required instances of consent from users, FLoC is the best shot we have to a cookie-less age of audience targeting. It represents a viable starting point — one that will continue to experience its share of experimentation in the months to come.

From Apple’s newly launched ATT to the imminent death of third-party cookies, the digital advertising industry is entering the age of data deprecation as consumers become more aware of privacy issues and thus, more reluctant to share their data. While the months ahead will be challenging to navigate, our industry has been given a much-needed impetus to shift away from the mindset of data maximization and break free from legacy infrastructure.

In spite of its position in space, the response to Google’s FLoC proposal has shown that rearchitecting the internet is no easy feat. There is and can be no cure-all when it comes to compliant user targeting and data activation. Given the complexity of data management and increasingly stringent regulatory requirements, a holistic and compliant infrastructure requires a good combination of various privacy-centric technologies — and FLoC is only the start.

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Google’s FLoC is a buzzword now. Verizon Media has announced the launch of its Next-Gen Solutions suite, a first-to-market offering for advertisers and publishers independent of cookies or mobile app IDs for audience creation, buying or measurement. Built for the identity-less era, this suite of solutions delivers relevant ad experiences while strengthening consumer trust.

As the ad ecosystem moves away from browser cookies and app advertising IDs, and legislation and privacy preferences shift, advertisers and publishers need solutions that help reach consumers in relevant and meaningful ways in the absence of IDs.

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Verizon Media’s Next-Gen Solutions use content and other real-time data signals like weather, and location and device types to power machine-learning algorithms that allow advertisers to connect with their most relevant audiences without the need for cookies, mobile app IDs, browser storage or creating user-level profiles.

The new suite is an extension of Verizon Media’s identity-enhanced offerings, which also include ConnectID, a unified identity solution built on top of Verizon Media’s diverse and consent-based identity graph. Advertisers and publishers now have solutions for when an ID is present with ConnectID, or when they’re facing the challenge to reach and connect in meaningful ways with identity-less opportunities. With a full-stack, unified ad platform, Verizon Media is uniquely positioned to help advertisers and publishers navigate the identity-less future simply and effectively.

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“The future of Identity lies in striking the right balance of providing a meaningful consumer experience and delivering growth for advertisers and publishers, while also preserving consumer trust,” said Iván Markman, Chief Business Officer, Verizon Media.

Ivan added, “For advertisers who want to future-proof their businesses in an identity-constrained future, innovative solutions for non-addressable inventory are a necessity, not a choice. This is why we’re launching Next-Gen Solutions, helping advertisers achieve targeted scale, delivering relevant consumer experiences, and enabling better publisher monetization in the identity-less world.”

The Next-Gen Solutions suite of audience creation, buying and measurement tools include:

Next-Gen Audiences

Audiences created from machine-learning models built on Verizon Media’s extensive first-party data signals. Enriched by contextual and real-time signals, Next-Gen Audiences leverage existing demo, interest, income, look-alike and predictive audience signals in an aggregated, privacy-centric manner. This offering provides ad campaign accuracy and performance for brands, agencies and publishers for identity-less impressions.

Next-Gen Buying

Leveraging Next-Gen Audiences, Next-Gen Buying is natively integrated into the Verizon Media DSP for seamless buying and delivery. Machine learning-based frequency capping limits over-exposures and maintains healthy end-user marketing experiences for identity-less impressions. With Nex-Gen Buying built-in, Verizon Media DSP optimizes advertiser campaigns by intelligently bidding between addressable and identity-less supply.

Next-Gen Measurement

As cookies and mobile app IDs disappear, conversion blindspots and inaccuracies will explode, severely limiting the ability to connect touchpoints for measurement. Additionally, siloed or clean-room measurement solutions may hamper understanding customer journeys or true ROAS.

With Next-Gen Measurement, advertisers maintain omnichannel insights and measurement. To achieve this, Next-Gen Measurement combines Verizon Media’s measurement methodology, based on first-party aggregated data, with third-party solutions provided by browsers and operating systems, to provide a comprehensive, reliable and privacy-preserving foundation for measurement.

Advertisers will be able to access Next-Gen Audiences and Next-Gen Buying in Q2. Next-Gen Measurement will be available by Q4 2021.

“As the industry continues to shift, the divide is now sharper between those that have first-party data and those that do not, creating new challenges and opportunities to sustain and accelerate business growth” said Markman. “With today’s news, we are extending our ability to better serve our customers, offering solutions for both identity-led and identity-less opportunities.”

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