{"id":43317,"date":"2022-02-22T11:36:27","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T19:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kochava.com\/?p=43317"},"modified":"2022-08-18T14:29:28","modified_gmt":"2022-08-18T21:29:28","slug":"making-sense-of-googles-plan-to-limit-tracking-on-android","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kochava.com\/ko\/blog\/making-sense-of-googles-plan-to-limit-tracking-on-android\/","title":{"rendered":"Making sense of Google\u2019s plan to limit tracking on Android"},"content":{"rendered":"[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overflow=”visible” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” column_element_spacing=”default” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” column_position=”default” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” animation_type=”default” bg_image_animation=”none” border_type=”simple” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text][\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” text_align=”left” row_position=”default” row_position_tablet=”inherit” row_position_phone=”inherit” overflow=”visible” pointer_events=”all”][vc_column_inner column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” column_element_spacing=”default” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” animation_type=”default” bg_image_animation=”none” border_type=”simple” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][image_with_animation image_url=”41769″ image_size=”full” animation_type=”entrance” animation=”None” hover_animation=”none” alignment=”center” border_radius=”none” box_shadow=”none” image_loading=”default” max_width=”75%” max_width_mobile=”default” margin_top=”50″ margin_bottom=”50″][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]FEBRUARY 18, 2022<\/span>\u00a0by<\/em>\u00a0RONAN SHIELDS<\/a>\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0SEB JOSEPH<\/a>\r\n\r\nDigiday\r\n\r\nGoogle often plays the role of good cop to Apple\u2019s bad cop when it comes to platforms blowing up the industry in the name of privacy. It really wants everyone to know how bad it feels about the disruption it\u2019s causing and the lengths it will go to smooth things over.\r\n\r\nThe launch of the Android version of its Privacy Sandbox\u00a0earlier this<\/a>\u00a0week is the latest example.\r\n
\r\n\r\nThe main takeaway: Google says it will work with the industry to establish a set of technical standards that will enable ad targeting and measurement online after traditional targeting tools, like mobile identifiers, are retired on its Android devices. Why is this important? It\u2019s pitched as the inverse of Apple\u2019s own scorched earth plan to do something similar.\r\n\r\nAnd it seems to be having the desired effect. Various stakeholders Digiday spoke with from across the addressable ad industry seem much more supportive of Google\u2019s approach, which promises to work with the industry to find privacy-centric advertising solutions that everyone can live with.\r\n\r\nMuch of that belief comes down to marketing.\r\n
\r\n\r\nShowing its softer side isn\u2019t necessarily new for Google. The company likes to present itself as a thoughtful partner whenever it\u2019s about to drop a bombshell on ad execs. Nevertheless, cynics take the rhetoric with a heavy dose of salt. This is a business, after all, that monopolized the idea of controlling all sides of the trade. But the sheer amount of regulatory pressure the business is under makes that approach harder to do. Put another way: Google has to be perceived as behaving differently.\r\n\r\nAfter all, Google is proposing measures that echo Apple\u2019s privacy crackdown which restricts third parties\u2019 access to iOS device users\u2019 data. It\u2019s an insider\u2019s competition of virtue signaling underpinned by governments\u2019 interest in cracking down on consumer privacy. For consumers who may or may not care.\r\n\r\nThat\u2019s not to say, the latest announcement hasn\u2019t set alarm bells ringing across the industry. App developers, in particular, remain concerned since Google intends to replace the mobile identifier \u2014 the mechanism they rely on to pull in a lot of media dollars \u2014 with elements from the Android Privacy Sandbox.\r\n\r\nThat\u2019s just one in a long list of unanswered questions and lingering concerns. Not all of them can be resolved. Not when everything about the Privacy Sandbox is subject to change as Google takes on feedback from the industry. For now, though, we\u2019ve pieced together what can be explained \u2014 and what to watch out for \u2014 as the initiative gathers momentum.\r\n

Is this a big deal?<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nYes and no. Yes, because the changes Google wants to usher in via the Android version of its Privacy Sandbox mean apps of all shapes and sizes are going to be limited even more in what data they can track about a person. On the other hand, however, this doesn\u2019t seem like it\u2019s going to cause anything like the trauma caused by Apple\u2019s crackdown on tracking on its devices which caused Meta to record a $10 billion drop in advertising sales this year. Execs across the industry forecast the next two years \u2014 the estimated timeframe Google has given the industry when it comes to the Privacy Sandbox rollout on Android \u2014 will be less fraught.\r\n\r\nAlex Austin, CEO of Branch, a mobile app measurement firm that\u00a0raised $300 million in funding<\/a>\u00a0last week, told Digiday his company was \u201cnot worried\u201d and wasn\u2019t planning an immediate deviation from its existing product development plans.\r\n\r\nThis is because he, along with many others, expects Google to develop APIs with similar functionality to SKADNetwork \u2014 an attribution tool\u00a0Apple developed in tandem with its data rollbacks<\/a>\u00a0on iOS \u2014 for the Android ecosystem. Not to mention the fact that its dialog with other tiers of the industry will be more robust when compared to Apple\u2019s conduct.\r\n

The immediate impact<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nThere won\u2019t be one. If anything, Privacy Sandbox is a pass for the ad industry given Google has essentially said it will wait at least two years to remove its mobile identifier and even then will only do so if a viable alternative has been found. That said, there\u2019s likely to be a surge in the use of the identifier and subsequently advertising with it as advertisers and publishers try to squeeze as much from it as they can before it goes.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe do believe there will be a large immediate impact surrounding strategies to best support marketers that are wanting to leverage advertising to drive growth \u2014 and publishers that want to ensure continued revenue in their ads businesses,\u201d said Charles Manning, CEO of Kochava, a company that helps brands and advertisers quantify the impact of their mobile marketing efforts.\r\n\r\nIn other words, marketers needn\u2019t panic over the latest announcement.\r\n\r\nNevertheless, Wayne Blodwell, CEO of TPA Digital, a consultancy that helps advertisers integrate digital more seamlessly into their wider marketing strategies, advised marketers to better familiarize themselves with Privacy Sandbox proposals as well as keep abreast of how Google\u2019s testing progresses.\r\n\r\n\u201cBy being dialed in this will help them to understand what will change from the current state of measuring\/targeting on Android to the future state,\u201d he added. \u201cThis will then allow them to assess the impact and changes they might need to make.\u201d\r\n

A meeting of minds<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nJust as it did for the browser version of the Privacy Sandbox, it\u2019s important that Google finds the appropriate forum to discuss the development of the one for Android devices. Remember, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) focuses on the web aspects only.\r\n\r\n\u201cPerhaps an answer to that would be a new forum focusing on specific proposals across environments,\u201d said \u0141ukasz W\u0142odarczyk, vp of programmatic ecosystem growth and innovation at RTB House. \u201cIt would allow all interested parties to participate in the development of this concept and improve it before it is sent to testing and implementation. Indeed, the value of such an exchange of views has been proven many times during the development of the Privacy Sandbox for the web.\u201d\r\n

Privacy assured?<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nDeveloping privacy-protecting solutions won\u2019t be enough. Google will have to proactively police the ecosystem if it is to live up to its promise of closing less scrupulous actors in the Android ecosystem that may seek to track device users without their witting consent.\r\n\r\nSeveral sources, all of whom requested anonymity due to widespread anxieties over public discussion of individual user-tracking, told Digiday there is a historic precedent for \u201cshady actors\u201d adopting measures whenever \u201cobfuscated methods\u201d of user tracking are introduced into any online ecosystem.\r\n\r\nFor instance, \u201cfingerprinting\u201d \u2014 a process whereby analytics companies use various data signals, a.k.a. probabilistically modeling, to\u00a0track users online without their consent<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 spiked in the immediate aftermath of Apple announcing privacy restrictions on iOS as well as its Safari web browser.\u00a0Despite this, Apple did not aggressively crackdown on these instances \u2014 a decision that did not necessarily line up with the public, privacy-conscious message it promoted.\r\n\r\nGoogle would be minded to avoid doing the same, according to the aforementioned sources. Doing so, however, is easier said than done.\r\n\r\nBranch\u2019s Austin told Digiday that \u201cit will be incredibly difficult\u201d for Google to provide a 100% guarantee that its collegiate approach to developing user privacy standards \u2014 a method that Google claims is more effective than Apple\u2019s unilateral policy.\r\n

New sandbox, same problems<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nBringing the Privacy Sandbox to its Android platform is Google essentially saying that it will restrict the use of persistent identifiers by the ecosystem at large. What it hasn\u2019t said is whether it\u2019s going to be subject to the same restrictions.\r\n\r\n\u201cGoogle is inhibiting the use of persistent identifiers by the world at large but isn\u2019t clarifying what its own intentions are,\u201d said Gartner analyst Eric Schmitt. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing in this announcement about Google restricting itself.\u201d\r\n\r\nThere are reasons to wonder.\r\n\r\n\u201cOne hurdle the Privacy Sandbox has continuously had to overcome is the perception that its proposals could provide an unfair advantage to Google\u2019s advertising business, which resulted in tight regulatory oversight, delays in its timeline, and skepticism from much of the industry,\u201d said Julie Rubash, chief privacy counsel at Sourcepoint.\r\n\r\nGranted, Google has committed, at least to the U.K.\u2019s Competition and Markets Authority, to implement internal limits on data it can use. The company also made a point in its Attribution documentation to clarify that Google\u2019s ad tech platform would be subject to the same enrollment process and limitations as other ad tech platforms, said Rubash.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":43323,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-43317","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-press"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kochava.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kochava.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kochava.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kochava.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kochava.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43317"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.kochava.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43322,"href":"https:\/\/www.kochava.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43317\/revisions\/43322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kochava.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kochava.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kochava.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kochava.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}