Google on the future of privacy
Google says it has developed an effective privacy-focused replacement for thirdparty cookies. Business Day spoke to Chetna Bindra, Google’s group product manager for user trust and privacy, about how its new technology will allow targeted ads while minimising privacy concerns for internet users.
Google says it has developed an effective privacy-focused replacement for third-party cookies — small pieces of data that help to identify internet users — which advertisers have typically used to track people online as a way to serve targeted ads.
Regulators around the world have been scrutinising Google and global internet giants including Facebook and their stance on online privacy.
Business Day spoke to Chetna Bindra, Google’s group product manager for user trust and privacy, about how its new technology will still allow advertisers to have targeted ads, while minimising privacy concerns for people using the internet.
How would you define Google’s Privacy Sandbox and the issues it is addressing?
A “Sandbox” is a testing environment. It is an effort to develop a set of standards in collaboration with the open web community to support a new approach to digital advertising that is privacy-centred.
This approach doesn’t rely on third-party cookies.
While the use of third-party cookies has been a staple of digital advertising, it involves the sharing of individual data of users across the web, and this is no longer conducive to consumers.
Additionally, we are seeing increasing regulation responding to people’s demands for privacy, such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in Europe and SA’s
Protection of Personal Information Act.
How will the new system maximise ad spend for business while ensuring protections for consumers?
We’ve always believed the notion of “its privacy or advertising” is a false choice
— there’s a path for our industry where you don’t have to sacrifice privacy to run effective ad campaigns. Our approach is advancing aggregation, anonymisation, on-device processing, and other privacypreserving technologies to replace individual identifiers that track people across the web. This will point to a future where there is no need to sacrifice relevant advertising and monetisation to deliver a private and secure experience. And I’m certain as people and the ecosystem realise these user benefits and see it as effective, more will come along.
How do Google’s privacy policies compare with those of competitors?
We don’t compare our privacy policies to other companies. We focus on providing details on our practices and describing the information that we collect and how we use it and the controls that users have in clear and plain language. We also have graphics and video explanations and have structured the policy so that users can explore it more easily, and embedded controls to allow users to access relevant privacy settings directly.
What has been the economic impact of increased regulation on digital advertising?
As mentioned, we don’t believe you have to sacrifice privacy to enable publishers to monetise their content. We are focused on privacy because we want long-term stability for the ads ecosystem, to help navigate it to a privacy-focused future.
In fact, this will have an impact on us and our products as we also currently use third party cookies for ads serving and measurement in products like Google Ads or Display & Video 360.
Despite this impact, we believe that this is the right thing for people and the industry at large.
When does Google expect to fully implement the changes?
Chrome is making significant progress with our proposals. It is still working towards the timeline they outlined last year. We know it’s a progressive time frame, given how long cookies have been around and how many parties rely on them. But there will be no surprises, this is a collaborative process.
Chrome recognises that some time may be required to perform the integration work and product updates to transition to the new API, which is why they are approaching this in a collaborative way and being transparent in the proposals, results and timelines.