Google responds to IAB Tech Lab's Privacy Sandbox report

Google responded to the analysis conducted by IAB Tech Lab's Privacy Sandbox Taskforce, addressing concerns raised about the adoption of its Privacy Sandbox.

In a blog post, Google stated that in our assessment, the analysis contains numerous misunderstandings and inaccuracies that we believe are crucial to address to ensure accurate information is provided to the ecosystem. Overall, the report seems to overlook the broader goal of Privacy Sandbox, which is to bolster user privacy while also facilitating effective digital advertising.

“Our response to IAB Tech Lab's analysis focuses primarily on the Technical Assessment section, providing detailed commentary and clarifications across the five programmatic advertising categories outlined in the report: Audience Management, Auction Dynamics, Creative Delivery and Rendering, Reporting, and Interoperability,” it said, in its post.

Responding to the report’s claim of “Loss of Runtime Data for Brand Safety,” Google explained that buyers continue to receive the URL of the page in an ad request. Comparisons between seller-declared URL and the URL declared by the browser during a Protected Audience auction can also be made.

Upon the feature request for reports that make it possible to identify the person browsing the web, Google responded that it is not compatible with its privacy goals.

Contesting the report’s claim that "Look-alike modelling is not supported," Google responded that there are multiple paths to support the goals of look-alike modelling. One of which could be learning the aggregate behaviour of a seed audience using the Private Aggregation API.

Google also cleared the air about API blocking exclusive audience targeting and modifying audience domains. According to it, there is no API restriction that blocks a contextual bid from being removed from the auction by a negative Interest Group.

“Part of our approach to privacy with Protected Audience is that Interest Groups represent one site’s worth of data. This allows the user to understand where ad selection data is derived and have control over it,” it said.

It also revealed that interest Groups are not limited to a single campaign. There is no limit to the number of campaigns that can bid on an Interest Group.

“When a user revisits the site, it is true there is no function to call to retrieve the information in the Interest Group, but the site (or its technology partner) can read the site partitioned storage to get the information they previously and simultaneously stored in an Interest Group.”

Talking about competitive separation, Google admits that there is not a way today to “ensure” competitive separation other than direct-sold ad serving where the publisher is hosting the ad.

Delving into the aspect of delivering a video ad next to video content, Google believes such Fenced Frames would be required no sooner than 2026. It predicts that they would have worked with the ecosystem, including IAB Tech Lab members, to develop support for this type of video to have the privacy and data leakage protections of Fenced Frames.

Talking about measuring the viewability of advertisements, Google believes that these are things developers would discuss while making Fenced Frames.

Furthermore, Google added that they should continue to phase out third-party cookies in H2 2024, subject to addressing any remaining competition concerns from the UK Competition and Markets Authority.

“We're encouraged by the many IAB members actively building solutions using the Privacy Sandbox APIs. We welcome continued collaboration with the IAB Tech Lab, and support their call to action for companies to start testing the Privacy Sandbox APIs and share feedback on how the Privacy Sandbox technologies can be improved now and in the future,” it said.

IAB Tech Lab has invited industry stakeholders to participate in a 45-day period for public comments, which will remain open until March 22, 2024.

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