Category:Privacy Sandbox

Privacy Sandbox is a set of proprietary Chrome browser APIs that provide information to buyers and sellers of digital media.^[1] Many of these APIs rely on server-side components.

Google's head of ad products has stated that Google's Chrome plan to stop supporting third-party cookies "won’t proceed if there aren’t solutions that work for everyone while also protecting user privacy in place." ^[2]

This page lists Google Privacy Sandbox projects as well as proposed modifications to these projects to better meet the needs of publishers and marketers. When an organization other than Google is proposing a project in the list below there name appears in parentheses.

Media Planning Projects

Given a goal of the Privacy Sandbox is to prevent marketers from understanding which audiences are interacting across different publishers, planning functions that analyze the reach, frequency and cost of engaging audiences across publishers will not be directly addressed by this project.

Experience Management Projects

Marketers engagement requirements are to show their content to their desired audience in the right context, while limiting the frequency capping across these different publishers. The "right" context is determined by the relative cost for a subsequent value generated from the exposure, such as brand awareness, click or conversion. Part of determining a desired audience is also filtering Non-human traffic.

Publisher engagement requirements are to show their content to their desired audience, while controlling for publisher business rules, such as controlling which types of advertising content can appear or appear together on the same page to a particular audience. Privacy Sandbox's time-delayed feedback may not meet publisher requirements for A/B testing nor quality assurance of their advertising.

A goal of the Privacy Sandbox is to limit the precision of audience segments in context, as well as to limit the real-time feedback marketers receive to update their measurement and budget allocations. Thus the Privacy Sandbox engagement proposals either force marketers to choose to control audience OR context, but not combine the two, or alternately force marketers to engage people using imprecise cohorts defined by Google.

Privacy Sandbox would also remove information that currently is used to optimize people's web experiences, such as the appropriate size files and video resolution for the device they are interacting with the web content or being able to offer nearby recommendations.

• Audience Management
  • Preference Management
    • CHIPS
    • Falcon
    • Swan (Swan.community)
  • Audience Creation
    • First Party Sets
    • FLoC
    • Parakeet
    • Pauraque (Nextroll)
    • Petrel
    • Robin
    • Sandpiper (CarbonRMP)
    • Spectacle (Eyeo - AdBlockPlus)
    • Swan (1plusX)
    • Sushi (Adobe)
    • Turtledove
    • Look-alike Modeling
      • Scaup
    • Fraud Detection
      • Gnatcatcher
      • Privacy Budget
      • Trust Tokens
      • User-Agent Client Hints
    • Authentication
      • WebID
• Auction Management
  • Augury
  • Dovekey
  • Fenced Frames
  • Ibis
  • Maccaw (Microsoft)
  • Parrrot (Magnite)
  • Sparrow (Criteo)
  • Tern (Adroll)
  • Turtledove

Reporting Projects

Marketers reporting requirements are to understand which content generating relatively better outcomes when shown to particular audiences in particular contexts. The attribution of outcomes, which often occur on marketer properties, is part of the process that enables marketers to value the publisher inventory they buy.

A goal of Privacy Sandbox is to prevent the link of positive outcomes on marketer properties back to particular publisher contexts.

• Reporting Management
  • Aggregate Reporting API
  • Conversion Measurement API
  • Private Click Attribution (Apple)
  • Murre (Adroll)
  • Pelican (Neustar)
  • Spurfowl (Nextroll)

Measuring Effectiveness and Ecosystem Impact

Many marketers are concerned that the effectiveness of their media would be impaired by having reduced access to accurate, complete and real-time feedback across the various publishers they advertise on. Many ad-funded publishers are concerned that their revenues would decline as a result of this reduced effectiveness.

Below are a few studies and approaches to quantify the impact on the ecosystem, expected by the roll out of Privacy Sandbox:

• Google's Effects of Disabling Third-party Cookies on Publisher Revenue^[3]
• Fledge
• Teetar (Criteo)

Regulator Perspectives

The UK CMA noted (1.5-1.6) the following concerns with Google's Privacy Sandbox proposals that would distort competition and impose unfair terms on people who use its Chrome browser, or more specifically:

1. "The Privacy Sandbox Proposals have caused uncertainty in the market as to the specific alternative solutions which will be available to publishers and ad tech providers once TPCs are deprecated.... causing harm to Google’s rival publishers and ad tech providers,"
2. "[Google's Privacy Sandbox Proposals would] advantage its own businesses and limit competition from its rivals."
3. Google has an advantage due to "the asymmetry of information between Google and third parties regarding the development of the Privacy Sandbox Proposals," (e.g., roll out schedule, code-level understanding of how they work)
4. Google may use self-preferencing criteria "to assess different design options" (e.g., policies to quantify how much distortion in competition is acceptable if it improves Google's revenues), and
5. Google lack of transparency with Privacy Sandbox regarding any "evidence relating to their effectiveness against these criteria."
6. In addition, "given the commercial incentives that Google faces in developing Google’s Proposals"
7. There is at present a "lack of independent scrutiny of Google’s Proposals" (e.g., if there is disagreement about tradeoff Google would make in weighting one criteria over another)^[4]

References