Google to Stop Selling Ads Based on Search History

Google has announced that it won't build alternative identifiers to track individuals as they browse the web once third-party cookies are phased out; nor use them in other Google products.

Last year, the firm announced its intention to phase out third-party cookies on its browser platform Chrome. Then in January, it said it was trialling a new approach called FLoC (Federated Learning Cohorts), as part of its commitment to replace third-party cookies with 'privacy-first' alternatives through which publishers and advertisers can target and measure ads. The FLoC approach examines sites' users visits to segment them, and then serves ads to users based on those segments.

In a blog post by David Temkin (pictured), Google's Director of Product Management, Ads Privacy and Trust, he said that his firm is aware that the latest announcement means that other providers may offer a level of user identity for ad tracking across the web that Google will not - such as PII graphs based on people's e-mail addresses. 'We don't believe these solutions will meet rising consumer expectations for privacy, nor will they stand up to rapidly evolving regulatory restrictions, and therefore aren't a sustainable long-term investment. Instead, our web products will be powered by privacy-preserving APIs which prevent individual tracking while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers', he added.

Response to the news was mixed, with Scott McDonald, CEO and President of the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), saying he doesn't believe Google's decision will affect advertisers, given the 'decades of evidence that contextual advertising works very well'. However, Quantcast CEO Konrad Feldman predicted that Google's decision will be 'bad news' for publishers and content creators, while benefiting the 'cash cows' of search and YouTube, which he said would be unaffected by Google's decision.

Rachel Gantz, General Manager, Activation at Comscore, says that without persistent identifiers, programmatic audience targeting is 'dead', given the programmatic ecosystem is largely transacted on ID-based data. However, she believes audience targeting can exist without user-level identifiers through the use of solutions such as her own firm's Predictive Audiences, which converts consumer behavior from its opt-in panels to content-level signals and can be used to target content that is likely to be a predictor of a defined consumer behavior.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.