Shelley Seale, Author at State of Digital Publishing

Third-party cookies are on their way out the door. As privacy concerns have mounted, Safari and Firefox have already blocked third-party cookies, and Google Chrome is next in line to eliminate third-party cookies in 2022. What does the cookieless future mean for digital publishers — and what will replace them? With these cookies eliminated, websites will no longer be allowed to save consumers’ cookies that contain their personal information. Without that data, how will publishers adapt their marketing model? For one thing, digital publishers and other organizations will need to change their strategies to obtain first-party data from their visitors — in other words, information that is given up voluntarily and directly to the website. There are also alternatives to third-party cookies being tested. Google recently said in a blog they will not replace third-party cookies with another tracking alternative — which is good to hear in regard to privacy rights for users. Google also wrote, “instead, our web products will be powered by privacy-preserving APIs which prevent individual tracking while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers.” What is Google FLoC? Google wants to change the way we are tracked online with cookies. One alternative to third-party cookies is Google’s new ad tech, Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). This system is part of Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative. Part of the mission of Privacy Sandbox is to keep the individual anonymous in a large group of cohorts with similar browsing interests that can be used for targeted advertising. FLoC will essentially be mapping out the same data that third-party tracking used to do. Your recent internet browsing history will be broken down into categories, to understand your interests, and then shared with advertisers. This avoids the risk that comes with third-party, because your identity will not be shared with this system, and users can opt-out. There is some speculation about this, that even without the risks from the old tracking methods, it will create its own set of privacy risks. Creating ads based on the behavior of browsing history can have negative effects, such as discriminating and predatory ads. Google is adamant that FLoC advocates this will be a better option than we have ever had regarding user privacy on the web, so huge ad corporations won’t infiltrate and track our every move online. Many people are wondering, why does our browsing need to be tracked at all? With the invasiveness of cookies, it has destroyed the trust of users, which is not good for the outlook on the future of the world wide web. FLoC ad tech Here is a more in-depth breakdown of how Google’s FLoC will use this technology for advertising to consumers. “Federated Learning” part in FLoC is the algorithms that are used to put people in large “cohorts”, or groups of people who share similar interests, such as cohort XYZ is a group of users who are interested in the latest news publications, and then can be put into an algorithm of marketing ads to those users for apps or subscriptions in which give you the best and quickest way to receive the latest news. Google will not be able to assign these labels to the cohorts, so you won’t be able to see in the privacy settings in Chrome what labels have been placed for you based on your browsing history. Google will give the information and then it is up to the ad technology industry to put labels and create these cohorts. Privacy concerns using Federated Learning of Cohorts Google insists that FLoC technology will protect the privacy of users, that the old technology needs to be replaced, and that users absolutely need more privacy when using the web. Many publishers are worried about the end of third-party data because for a long time publishers have been using this personal data from third-party sources to market and support their content outreach and advertising. Cookie blocking had created new and extremely invasive ways for companies to continue to target their ads to users. Google aims to end this invasion of privacy by using the new Federated Learning of Cohorts technology, but people are not sold on this idea, saying that fingerprinting will still be used with FLoC, as it was when cookies were blocked. Fingerprinting is a way data can leak from the browser history when you visit a website. These sites can look at your IP address, which reveals your identity. That data can be linked back to the operating system you are using, and what Bluetooth devices you have connected. This is looked at as an invasion of online privacy, and people are predicting fingerprinting will still be an issue with FLoC. There are a lot of new privacy concerns with using federated learning in the replacement of cookies. One is that the removing anonymity of the individuals can be easier than we think. How does this happen? Think about the cohorts having only thousands of individual IDs, versus sorting through millions of users if there were no cohorts. All it would take it, one bad actor, to go through the thousands of IDs and attach them to the anonymized IDs. And on top of that, if your browsing history is different from others within the specific cohort, they can find you even easier. The idea of tracking browsing history to gather data for Chrome users is controversial as it is, and it leaves people wondering if FLoC is an alternative that we should even be using. Is ad targeting worth the price? Users prefer not to be targeted at all, so why risk their privacy? How do I know my Chrome browser is using FLoC? As of March 2021, Google is running a Chrome “origin trial” to test FLoC tracking. Currently, the trial only affects .5% of users in selected regions. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has created a website that with one click, you can find out if your Chrome browser is using FLoC tracking technology. The page states it “will try to detect whether you’ve been made a guinea pig in Google’s ad-tech experiment”, in other words, it may not be one hundred percent accurate, but since only .5% of users are affected, it is probably giving you correct results. Google may add users or change the trial at any time, so it is a good idea to head back to the website to see if you have been added to the FLoC cohort trial. Can you block the FLoC? Since this technology is so new and still hasn’t fully replaced third-party cookies, people are unsure of the repercussions the FLoC could have, and think that while Google services are aiming to give Chrome users better privacy, there will be a new onslaught of problems created in the process. People are still uneasy about how much their privacy is protected through FLoC, and that there will still be a way to access the user's individual IDs within the cohorts. The good thing is, there are ways to block FLoC from Chrome if you want to opt-out. There are a few ways users can block the new FLoC technology on your browser, by downloading a plug-in to block the tracking or install another web browser that is not owned by Google and does not use third-party tracking. What browsers are not owned by Google? There are many alternatives to using Google Chrome. It’s well known that Google Chrome has a seamless user experience and is high functioning across all of your devices. But having such a customized user experience will come with the price of giving up personal data. Web browser alternatives are out there, and you may not only have to rely on Safari or Firefox to surf the web. Of course, Safari is hailed as the best alternative to Chrome for Mac users, and Firefox is typically ranked the best non-Chrome browser, holding similar features and power as Chrome. Fossbytes has given us a list of their best non-Chrome browsers. They believe Brave is the best open-source web browser, and that it blocks cookie-based advertising and trackers that invade your privacy. A super cool feature in Brave is Brave Rewards. Users can earn blockchain tokens and reward the sites that they frequently visit. You can regularly get tokens from the Brave browser, and then you can donate them to a publisher to compensate for the ads that you have blocked while browsing. It’s a win for both sides. You can also use Tor within Brave, which hides your browsing history, as well as your location, for a private web experience. How can publishers reach their audience without the use of cookies? There are many ways you can reach your audience without using third-party data. Companies can use first-party cookies, which provide data just like third-party cookies — only collected directly from consumers on their own website, rather than retrieved from third parties. Using first-party data is an investment and can be expensive, because of all the data management tools that companies will need that no longer will be handled by third-party companies. Another option is contextual analysis. Contextual analysis helps marketers display targeted advertising based on the content of the website that the user is visiting. This is different than using cookies, in which the data is gathered from your personal information and online habits. An example would be if a user is frequently visiting a website or blog that focuses on a certain topic, such as fashion or food, then companies can analyze that data and target those users with ads relating to fashion or food, like articles on new restaurants in the area, or an article on the latest fashion trends. Publishers can also use cultural marketing to get the audience relevant new content. This doesn’t use data from users to create an ad but instead uses current events and trends to market to a demographic in their audience. This might not be as consistent as more direct data-driven marketing but is proven successful if the publisher is keeping on track with what people want to read about. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, cultural marketing can be used by knowing that people want the latest information in all things COVID-related and creating content around this. There is a warning with contextual marketing for companies and publishers, to make sure that using current events to target your audience isn’t done by exploiting the events to make a profit. Make sure you are not only reaching out to your audience when something major happens. Third-party cookies All in all, there is no reason to be worried about the cookieless future — after all, their privacy infringements are the reason advertising surveillance has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. Artificial intelligence (AI) can be a solution to the end of these cookies, which definitely comes at a price, and can be a challenge to get started, because of the endless possibilities that can be achieved with AI. AI will only continue to grow and improve and be used to gather data from companies to target their audience and build a business model. To FLoC or not to FLoC? In conclusion, it is honestly a personal preference and opinion on how private you want your data and browsing history to be and accessed by businesses. FLoC is still a new technology, and even with all the doubts about how much more privacy it gives users versus cookies, it most likely will give users a bit more privacy. We can only keep up with the latest information from Google as the FLoC trial continues and more users are added.

Shelley Seale

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