Transfon's approach to building privacy-first future web

Transfon Team

Transfon Team

4 min read

Google announced it will not replace the phasing out third party cookies with something equally to track users across the web.

Google "will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web".

Transfon's approach to building privacy-first open future web

“Instead, our web products will be powered by privacy-preserving APIs which prevent individual tracking while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers,” writes Google. “Advances in aggregation, anonymization, on-device processing and other privacy-preserving technologies offer a clear path to replacing individual identifiers.”

Third-party cookies have been blocked on both Safari and Firefox and the major browser Google Chrome will do the same soon.

Tracking workaround solutions and CNAME cloaking

The lifetime of cookies dropped by javascript has been capped at a maximum of 7 days.

To track a user for a longer period, a few companies are working on solutions to workaround the tracking Prevention features in Safari Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP).

This solution is widely used by data analytics solutions like Adobe, and some consent management platform also suggested this solution to publishers.

In response to this trend, Apple announced several updates on ITP to prevent it. The lastest ITP 2.3 stopped CNAME Cloaking.

Apple makes it clear to tech vendors, any new solution of tracking users will be stopped in the future.

Google's Privacy Sandbox

The alternative solution to the third-party cookies proposed by Google to the industry is Google's Privacy Sandbox.

The browser will still track the user's activities, but hide the individual inside a large crowd of “cohorts” with similar interests.

Technically this approach is no different from personalised targeting by targeting individual.

"We realize this means other providers may offer a level of user identity for ad tracking across the web that we will not — like PII graphs based on people's email addresses," writes Google. "We don't believe these solutions will meet rising consumer expectations for privacy, nor will they stand up to rapidly evolving regulatory restrictions, and therefore aren’t a sustainable long term investment."

Google's Privacy Sandbox is hiding the tracking activities with five application programming interfaces. Advertisers can see the crowd interest data with the API. It is relying on a person's browsing habits within the Chrome browser.

Industry players have concerns about Google's approach because the Chrome browser is unbalanced owned by Google. "Google has a long track record of tipping the scales in its favour in order to protect its share of advertising dollars." - said DigiDay.

Unified ID 2.0 by The Trade Desk

The solution of decreasing reliance on the third-party cookie proposed by one of the largest DSP The Trade Desk is built from hashed and encrypted email addresses. Although it is announced as an open-source solution, they have not publicly released any source code as of today.

Similar to The Trade Desk, there are about 19 different 'unified ID' providers: BritePool ID, CriteoID, Halo ID, ID+, ID5 ID, IdentityLink, IntentIQ ID, LiveIntent ID, Quantcast ID, Verizon Media ConnectID etc.

Prebid.org said they will also support Unified ID 2.0 of The Trade Desk.

Transfon's approach to building privacy-first web

At Transfon, we are building solutions for independent publishers. We believe the power should belong to the publishers, brands and consumers but not one or hundreds of middlemen.

The core issue of the web today is that it is not balanced, not transparent to consumers and publishers.

We brought back the power of the choices to consumers by providing consent management solutions for publishers and marketers. Make it easier for publishers, brands, consumers to manage the consent data.

We are also building the system, tools and solutions like UniSignIn helping publishers and brands to establish a first-party direct relationship with consumers. First party relationship means fewer middlemen take the advantage of the data to belong to users, brands and publishers, it also means there will be a more distributed and balanced power of the future web.

About Transfon

Transfon User Experience Platform serves hundreds of million users per month to provide a seamless privacy experience for users, brands and publishers in the age of post GDPR. Contact us to know more: [email protected]

References:

  • https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/a-more-privacy-first-web
  • https://digiday.com/marketing/wtf-googles-privacy-sandbox/
  • https://www.thetradedesk.com/us/about-us/industry-initiatives/unified-id-solution-2-0
  • https://webkit.org/blog/9521/intelligent-tracking-prevention-2-3/