Where next in a post-Privacy Sandbox world
Opinion
The industry can continue to share data, enabling personalised advertising, measurement, fraud control and more, and competition has been supported. However, this isn’t over yet.
So, after five years of limbo, at last the way forward is clear.
The “cookiepocalypse” threatened by Google isn’t going to happen and Privacy Sandbox is all but over. As co-founder of Movement for an Open Web, the organisation that filed the original complaint with the UK’s Competition & Markets Authority about Privacy Sandbox, we see this — unsurprisingly — as good news.
Advertisers, agencies, publishers and adtech can continue to share data, enabling personalised advertising, measurement, fraud control and more, without the immediate fear that this will be taken from them.
More importantly, competition has been supported. Google was attempting to block these interoperable standards in order to boost adoption of its centralised new technology. Now, digital marketers can choose whether they want to use cookies, alternative IDs or even — if Google doesn’t kill the project completely — the Privacy Sandbox API.
This was all anyone asked and Google’s climbdown — on the surface — appears to enable this free market of ideas.
But even though the immediate threat has been headed off, we must all remain vigilant as this isn’t over yet.
Ongoing threats
Google has been deemed a monopolist by two US courts, with remedies still in development.
Meanwhile, we must watch out for potential new abuses of monopoly power. Although remedies from the US Department of Justice (DoJ) are progressing, appeals may delay action and, without interim measures, the industry remains at risk until effective solutions are implemented.
After all, Google has made no guarantee that cookies will remain indefinitely.
On the other hand, there’s Apple, which has a 36% revenue-share agreement with Google to degrade cookies on Safari to drive up the value of Google services to advertisers.
The outcome of the Privacy Sandbox process makes it clear that blocking open and interoperable standards by a browser owner is an anti-competitive act, as are such revenue-share agreements. How, then, can Apple justify its ongoing retention of Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), the primary means used to extract more money from advertisers?
It’s only a matter of time before regulators catch up to Apple.
The emergence of ID-less solutions and privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) in a post-cookie world highlights the need to stay vigilant to future monopolists in a winner-takes-all intermediary market between advertisers and publishers.
While competition in a fair market is welcome, using proprietary, centralised solutions — whether from Google or others — should be concerning for publishers and advertisers that are seeking to avoid unwittingly creating another Google.
Distraction tax
The Privacy Sandbox process has inflicted significant harm on the industry. For five years, advertisers, agencies, adtech and media owners have suffered from uncertainty over a key foundational element of their businesses.
All businesses should be free to waste their shareholder’s money. Shareholders can replace the directors. Those that did “lean in” to testing Privacy Sandbox only have themselves to blame.
However, the continued announcements and deadlines served as a distraction for those that had no choice over whether to follow the unfolding “car crash”.
Not all of this effort is wasted. The value and utility of free interoperability enabled by cookies has been proven beyond doubt. PET-providing snake-oil vendors now need to justify their clean-room, zero-party, privacy-first nonsense against unrestricted interoperability.
Their solutions enable confidentiality for businesses that want to work together but don’t trust each other. They do absolutely nothing for privacy on their own.
What’s to be done?
The most straightforward answer is for the DoJ to follow through on its judgements in its search and adtech cases against Google. The suggested remedies involve divesting Chrome and selling off parts of Google’s ad infrastructure.
But divestments alone aren’t enough. Unless the process is carefully thought out and structural remedies are accompanied by behavioural ones on both Google and any acquirer, we will simply be replacing one monopoly with another.
Movement for an Open Web will continue collaborating with the DoJ and other regulators to ensure the best outcome and encourage collective action through trade bodies and advocacy organisations like ourselves.
You choose
Use this opportunity to consider what you want the future to look like. If you’re a publisher or advertiser, you have more power than you likely realise. You control which agencies and technology partners you work with. Choose wisely.
If you want to operate your business in a world free from monopolists, where dramas about technology you don’t understand are confined to history books, then play your part in making the digital market grow up.
All industries are regulated when they become essential to society. Digital, 30 years after it started, is no different.
James Rosewell is co-founder of Movement for an Open Web