Six key business challenges that privacy sandboxes should address

Google’s Chrome Privacy Sandbox is built on the privacy principles defined by the Chrome team and aims to provide an alternative for a cookie-free future with browser features that support digital advertising. .

However, it is impossible to replace everything that has been developed over the past 20 years to support online advertising in one fell swoop. And to be honest, some advertising use cases should be left in the past.

But while the Privacy Sandbox is bold and ambitious, it is being rolled out with a lot of confusion and ambiguity. And there are many unanswered questions about how it will work.

Privacy Sandbox is not a 1:1 replacement for 3 PCs

As Anthony Chavez, Vice President of Privacy Sandbox Product Management, said recently“We are not trying to provide a one-to-one replacement for cookies and cross-site identifiers. Full stop.”

Instead, the privacy sandbox is an entirely new paradigm. This aims to rebuild the ad server and ad exchange within the browser, along with some other restrictions.

Google has introduced two sets of APIs to support digital advertising. One set of APIs is for displaying relevant ads. TOPICS is for user behavior observed in the browser, and the Protected Audience API (PAAPI) provides functionality for buyers to set and target audience segments. Another set of APIs is the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) for ad measurement and attribution and privacy support features.

The resulting product contains a number of privacy-based restrictions About publishers, sellers, and buyers. This requires the industry to hit the reset button on critical business needs such as billing, reporting, ad spend optimization, and decision feedback loops.

Last week, Google released a response to IAB Tech Lab Concerns About whether a particular advertising use case is compatible with Privacy Sandbox. The IAB Tech Lab Privacy Sandbox Task Force is considering Google’s response along with all other responses received during the comment period.

However, there is much that we do not currently understand about the new paradigm.

1. What is interim functionality? What is the final state? The Privacy Sandbox includes preliminary features that the industry plans to collaborate on in the future, but its final end-state is unclear and there are numerous unsettled details about how the auction will work. It is located in Is it transparent? Will the functionality available today be guaranteed in future iterations? Uncertainty makes it difficult to commit to new investments.

2. There are no commercial warranties or contracts from Google. Privacy Sandbox is intended to take over critical business functions such as conducting real-time auctions, ad serving, and reporting. But what are Google’s contracts with buyers and sellers? Who is responsible if something stops working or doesn’t work as expected?

This is software. And as with all software, it’s not a question of if bugs will occur, but when. Unlike server-side software bugs, PAAPI bugs are much harder to roll back quickly.

3. One set of technologies will be needed for the privacy sandbox and another set for OpenRTB, further fragmenting the Internet. For example, Fenced Frames are essential to the Privacy Sandbox and required for use with PAAPI, but they coexist with iframes.

If won in a PAAPI auction, your ad must be displayed using a fenced frame. However, to win in a real-time bidding auction, you must display your ad using an iframe. This means advertisers have to build ads using his two different means of measurement and attribution. This doesn’t scale well.

4. Reliable billing. Privacy Sandbox moves measurement from event-level data to aggregated and delayed reporting via TEE, but does not provide a path for certification from the MRC or other auditors.

Noise (a random amount of data) is added to the summary report to protect user privacy. But how much noise is acceptable in aggregate industry or MRC certified data?

And what if a browser update resets the data, or a bug stops reporting data, or the user doesn’t update the browser? Especially if the user can actually delete all measurement data? , What is the guarantee that all data reported is accurate and will always be reported?

5. What is the ad rendering delay? Given that Google recommends a privacy sandbox auction after a traditional server-side auction, what are the expected latencies? What are the benchmarks, especially at full scale? How do different devices and computing resources impact the execution of auctions and ad rendering that are important to the user experience?

6. Not all tasks can be performed on the device. Google proposes TEE for auctions and reporting. If TEE is considered a necessary component, why not fully develop it as part of a minimum viable product before forcing a non-scalable solution on the industry? How can you optimize your infrastructure costs if you’re operating with a cloud service provider other than the Chrome team or your on-premises data center?

path forward

With so much at stake, what should Google do?

1. Collaborate with industry to develop standardized and interoperable methods to support features such as campaign budgeting and pacing, frequency management, reach calculations, and brand safety. Remember: Even government regulations have carve-outs for critical business functions like measurement.
2. Identify solutions where browser assistance can provide better solutions, such as brand safety and fraud mitigation. We enable third parties to perform these functions for our customers using on-device browser functionality or TEE services.
3. Incorporate widely used standards into your services and TEE designs, such as OpenRTB for auction services and VAST for video advertising. This saves businesses time and money when integrating Privacy Sandbox APIs.
4. Google wants to be the first in the industry to fully develop the Privacy Sandbox feature. If TEE is a requirement, fully develop your TEE product before asking industry for experimentation and adoption. Remarketing is a perfect use case in its current design, but it also requires a fully developed end-to-end solution.
5. Finally, we will open source the Google Chrome code used to run the Protected Audience API. Companies need to feel confident building their business on that code, especially when there are no contracts, commercial guarantees, or accountability from Chrome.

Products that aim to become industry fundamentals must be complete systems that support end-to-end business needs with the necessary commercial guarantees, contracts, public company fiduciary requirements, and service level agreements. Privacy Sandbox is no exception.

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