Monthly Archives: March 2021

On Wednesday, Google dropped either a bombshell or a nothingburger (depends who you ask) with its announcement via blog post that it will stop selling ads based on cross-site browsing and third-party cookies.

The bigger news, arguably, is that Google will explicitly not support and perhaps even take steps to hinder industry identity initiatives, such as Unified ID 2.0, initiated by The Trade Desk.

But on the cookie front, people in the advertising industry were a little surprised by the intense reaction to Googles news, considering that its already been more than a year since Google pledged to kill third-party cookie tracking in Chrome by 2022. And because the bell had been tolling for third-party cookies long before then.

The idea that cookies need to be deprecated is quite an old idea, like a decade old, said Jonathan Nelson, CEO of Omnicom Digital. We were talking about this when I was on the board of Aggregate Knowledge, and cookies going away was one of the reasons we sold to Neustar when we did which was nine years ago.

So, why the furor over Googles blog post?

What Google is NOT saying

The answer comes from reading between the lines of what Google has said it will do and what Google doesnt mention.

Google is saying that it will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals on Chrome and also wont use them in its products, by which one can assume Google is talking about its third-party ad products, including DV360, Google Ads and Campaign Manager.

What Google is not saying, or at least makes no mention of, is anything to do with app tracking on Android, tracking on YouTube or tracking on any of its other owned-and-operated properties or services, including Search, Maps and Gmail. (YouTube and search ads are massively lucrative for Google.)

Repudiating third-party signals in Chrome and within its web-based ad products is completely unrelated to Googles ability to continue tracking users across its own services and properties, said Jrgen Galler, CEO and co-founder of Zurich-based cookieless DMP 1plusX.

Google has a universal ID the Google login meaning it will still be able to identify users across all of its services, Galler said.

And there is no reason to believe that Googles assurance that it wont replace third-party cookies marks a shift away from behavioral targeting on Googles owned-and-operated properties, said Nii Ahene, chief strategy officer at performance marketing agency Tinuiti.

But were awaiting further clarity here, Ahene said.

Walling up

For example, Google hasnt provided a third-party cookie sync with YouTube for some time, said Arun Kumar, chief data and technology officer at IPG.

We expect [Google] to continue to use their existing first-party solutions, like first-party cookies and authenticated users, [and] we do expect them to be consistent in this across their range of offerings, Kumar said. Our thinking is that theyll use this approach across all of their inventory, inclusive of YouTube.

The focus on first-party is directly tied to a pattern of recent decisions that demonstrate Google no longer wants to receive, store, process or transmit user-level data, even hashed or pseudonymized data, that comes from outside of their own logged-in products or that isnt of a first-party nature, such as Google Analytics, said Myles Younger, senior director of the data practice at S4-owned programmatic marketing agency MightyHive.

You can draw a straight line from the announcement of the redaction of DoubleClick log files in 2018 to the debut of Privacy Sandbox in 2019 to [the current] announcement, Younger said. Wherever possible, Google clearly doesnt want to handle external user-level data where it cant track that datas provenance or control how its used.

Fly on the wall

But how much better is a tactic like FLoC than third-party cookie tracking from a privacy perspective? That depends on a lot, including how large a cohort is and how many attributes are included.

And although FLoCs are aggregated, they essentially serve the same purpose as third-party cookies, which is to market to individuals based on their observed browsing behavior, said Ghostery President Jeremy Tillman.

Google is scrambling to save face and appease growing user privacy expectations and, once again, is doing so by throwing new labels on old tactics, he said. We should assume that Google doesnt need cross-site web browsing signals to build profiles they have so many other sources of data.

And if Google is missing anything, its safe to assume that itll use some form of predictive analytics to fill in the blanks, Tillman said.

And so its hard not to be a cynic, said Alice Sylvester, a partner at measurement consulting firm Sequent Partners.

I dont necessarily trust them to be doing this for consumer benefits, she said.

Read the rest here:

What Google Is And Isn't Saying When It Says It Won't Build Alternative IDs After The Death Of Third-Party Cookies - AdExchanger

The Sell Sider is a column written for the sell sideand contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.

Today's column is written by Tom Kershaw, CTO of Magnite and Chairman of Prebid.org.

For the second time in the past 13 months, Google managed to plunge the world of ad tech into complete chaos Wednesday, despite not saying much thats new or noteworthy. If you believe what you read, its the end of the open Internet as we know it, the upending of the entire publisher ecosystem, and (of course) a financial meltdown to go with it. And its not the first time.

Unfortunately for the sensationalists, the reality is that Googles bombshell announcement was entirely predictable. And even though it ducked the important, difficult questions that the Internet faces as it charts a necessary course to a consumer-first privacy regime, I actually think this is a good thing.

What did Google say? To paraphrase: We are not using e-mail address-based systems as identifiers on our properties. We are focused on the Privacy Sandbox efforts. This was obvious from the start.

But whats not so obvious is its significance. Google is no longer going to use its billions of logged-in users to oppress the rest of the Internet.

What did the industry hear instead? Google is shutting down UID, LiveRamp, and every other ad industry effort to solve for identity with a consent-based model. This is something that Google never said and couldnt really do if it wanted to.

Googles announcement, which was made by Googles Ads team, not Chrome, will have no impact on email-based identity systems such as UID 2.0 and LiveRamps ATS. These solutions will continue because they are based on consumer choice and opt-in.

But more importantly, user log-ins are just one part of the solution that the industry is putting forward to allow for relevant, effective advertising without third-party cookies. Its always been the case that logins would only cover a small percentage of the overall Internet community. In fact, most analysts feel that 20% is the upper bound of how many users we can expect to opt-in to a targeted ad experience.

The majority of the Internet will need another solution and the good news is that solution already exists and is being actively deployed by publishers and advertisers based on open-source and collaboration. That solution is publisher-driven audience segments: addressable audiences created by publisher first-party data, that is collected in a privacy-compliant manner, and presented to buyers in a fully-anonymized fashion.

How did we get here? Publishers have always had direct relationships with consumers. Through those relationships, they got permission to capture data about their interests and preferences, and then use that data to deliver tailored messages and content. In the past, that data was fragmented and uncoordinated, so it didnt provide the scale that advertisers needed.

With the evolution of identity away from third-party cookies (and towards a more privacy-friendly model), publishers have emerged as the party thats best-positioned to obtain meaningful consent from consumers. But this time, publishers are doing it differently. Organizations such as Prebid.org (where Im Chairman) are providing a real sandbox for them to collaborate and innovate.

Prebid publishers are creating collective standards for expressing audiences which theyre presenting to advertisers as anonymized, but highly performant segments. And it's working. Thousands of publisher-based segments are already running in production across the industry. For example, at Magnite (where I moonlight as CTO), more than 10% of our revenue is running through these curated markets and we are just getting started.

Too much of the privacy debate is about competing solutions, but in reality, the new Internet will consist of a combination of user logins, browser-based auctions, and critically publisher-driven solutions that preserve the accuracy and relevancy of todays model while providing an anonymized user experience. Its actually really cool stuff, not the sort of thing that should elicit panic for advertisers or developers.

Ironically, the overlooked part of Googles announcement this week was that they indicated full support for publisher controlled first-party solutions. Publishers play a key role in creating a privacy-first Internet because they are the reason consumers are online to begin with.

In the end, Googles announcement that they will focus on Privacy Sandbox isnt just predictable, its welcome. It means theyre going to actually use the same tools as the rest of the industry. Compared to the last 10 years of ad tech where Google largely left the independent Internet to fend for itself, I count this as progress. Were finally moving in the direction of a level playing field.

To be clear, the announcement will not impact the efficacy of log-in solutions. UID 2.0 and ATS will continue without Googles support, as they have from the beginning. Open source, transparent solutions that give consumers choice will always win. The combination of user logins, publisher first-party segments, and the Chrome-controlled solution, will all coexist to create the foundations of a new, better Internet.

Link:

Google's Non-Announcement Shocks The Ad Industry Again - AdExchanger

YouTube has more than 2 billion users. It generates $20 billion a year. But those numbers dont begin to explain the size and impact of the worlds biggest video site.

So lets try this: YouTube is so big that you almost dont notice it. Its just always there, always on. It seems fundamental to digital life, like texting or email. Maybe, like my kids, you actively go to YouTube for entertainment or education. Maybe youre like a lot of other people and end up watching YouTube without even knowing youre doing it: Youre just watching a video, which means youre watching YouTube.

Its also hard to get your head around how quickly YouTube got to this place: The site didnt exist until 2005. And when Google bought it in 2006, it still seemed possible that the search giant had just wasted $1.65 billion. Sure, YouTube was a good place to watch dogs on skateboards or pirated Lazy Sunday clips, but what else could you do there?

Now we know: YouTube is a place where you can watch everything great stuff, dumb stuff, useful stuff, dangerous stuff. And its a place where you can upload almost anything, if youre inclined. Google is an open platform, meant to quickly distribute anything and everything, without any friction getting in the way.

Whether thats a good thing or a bad thing, or both, depends on your perspective.

As Shirin Ghaffary and I explore on this weeks episode of Land of The Giants: The Google Empire, YouTube and Google didnt take a linear path to get to this place.

For instance: YouTube started out as a money-losing novelty built by a couple of guys from PayPal, and Google had its own plans to dominate internet video. But Google quickly pivoted and killed off its in-house site (theres a reason you dont remember something called Google Video) and snapped up YouTube instead.

Likewise: The first people who succeeded on YouTube didnt really have a plan to succeed on YouTube. They were often just kids, like Smoshs Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox, who were doing it for fun and because using YouTube was easy.

But YouTube quickly figured out that it could give the Ian and Anthonys of the world a chance to make money from YouTube by giving them a cut of some of the sites ad revenue. And now theres a universe of people uploading videos and using YouTube for profit or power or both and a constant push and pull within YouTube, which wants all of those videos on its site, except when it discovers that some of them have crossed the line.

What that line is and how YouTube decides what that line is, and why it decides to ignore other stuff that seems line-crossing to many people is a source of continual discussion in and outside of YouTube. It can be very difficult trying to figure out how and why YouTube polices its platform up until June 2020, for instance, David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, had his own YouTube channel.

It also seems cleaning up the site will be a never-ending problem for YouTube and the world that YouTube affects. Thats because YouTube is an open platform, so it seems impossible to imagine a world where some combination of carefully written rules, thoughtful moderation, and robust machine learning keep the site free of odious users the kind who might want to use the worlds biggest video site to spread misinformation about vaccines or election results or white supremacy.

But YouTube executives continue to insist that the benefits of running the site as an open platform are worth it that YouTube, just like the internet, is full of everything, and were better off in a world where almost everythings available with a click. Its a complicated discussion, and an important one, which made it a great subject for a podcast: Listen here, and let us know what you think.

For more stories about Googles incredible rise, covering everything from the mobile phone wars to the companys internal tensions to its current antitrust battles, subscribe now to Land of the Giants: The Google Empire.

View original post here:

The story of YouTube: Recodes Land of the Giants Google podcast - Vox.com

Virtual meetings on Google Meet can sometimes feel a little one-sided. It makes a big difference when participants can actively contribute to the conversation.

That's where Google Meet's poll feature comes in. You can quickly create questions featuring multiple choice answers during the meeting to help keep things engaging and get attendees' responses on record.

Important: To use Google Meet polls, you'll need to have a G Suite Business, Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise plus, or Google Workspace for Education Plus account.

If you're ready to create a poll in Google Meet, access the Activities tab and select "Polls" from the list of options.

Quick tip: To conduct a poll in Google Meet, you'll need to be the meeting's host meaning either you created the meeting, or someone transferred the meeting to you to moderate.

The Activities tab is to the right of the digital clock. Abbey White/Insider

Quick tip: The Activities icon is a triangle, a circle, and a square stacked on top of each other.

The Polls option is second on the Activities tab. Abbey White/Insider

Enter the information you want to poll Google Meet users on. Abbey White/Insider

Quick tip: To add another poll answer, click "Add an option."

Launching a poll will distribute it to everyone in the call. Abbey White/Insider

Quick tip: When you hit "Save," Google Meet will store the poll under the "Activities" tab so you can go back and edit and launch it at a later time.

To respond to a Google Meet poll, you must join a Google Meet with an account that allows polls.

Once a poll is live in Google Meet, you'll see a green dot over the Activities icon notifying you that a poll has launched. Click on "Activities," select the Polls option, and then select your answer from the options listed.

Quick tip: Google Meet will also notify you with a small pop-up message that a poll is live and ready to answer.

Google Meet will keep the poll results private unless the moderator enabled the "Show everyone the results" option. In either case, users will never be able to see the names of other respondents, just the number of votes on the poll.

There are a number of options and tools at your disposal to help you moderate your Google Meet poll.

Once the Google Meet is over, the moderator will receive an automatically generated email with a report on any polls that were conducted.

The moderator can click on the report attachment included in the email to see the names and votes of people who took the poll.

Follow this link:

How to create a poll in Google Meet to engage meeting attendees and gather reactions - Business Insider

Several Android apps are getting some useful updates.

Google recentlyannounced it's rolling out updatesto six different Android apps, from theTalkBack screen reader to Android Auto. The updates add useful new features, like the ability to schedule when a text message will be sent in the Messages app. Google Maps is also receiving an update of its own that adds a true dark mode throughout the entire app, not just when you're using navigation.

There's also an update to Google's password autofill tool that will tell you if your passwords have been leaked and let you know it's time to change it.

Keep in mind, these are rolling updates. That means you may not have access to them right away. The best advice I have is to keep checking the Play Store for app updates.

Below I'll walk you through the new features and how to use them.

Now playing: Watch this: Android's useful new features

3:06

If you use Google's Password Manager to autofill your usernames and passwords in Chrome or Android apps, then this update is for you. Google will now check all of your login credentials to see if they've been leaked or exposed in a hack. If it finds your information, a prompt will let you know you need to change your password.

The new Password Checkup tool is rolling out to Android devices running Android 9 or higher. You can check if you're using Google's autofill service by opening theSettingsapp, then go toSystem>Languages & Input>Advancedand tapAutofill Service. If that path doesn't take you to the right place, since every Android phone is a little bit different, you can use the search tool in the Settings app to look forAutofill. (For example, on the Galaxy S21 Ultra the setting is underGeneral Managementin the settings app.)

Here's what it looks like when Google finds a bad password.

Once you navigate to the Autofill section, you'll want to make sureGoogleis selected.

If you haven't been using Google's autofill tool, then start saving your credentials when it prompts you. If you have been using it, then keep using it as you have been. The tool will let you know when it finds your information was leaked -- you don't have to do anything special to trigger it.

Full dark mode is finally coming to Google Maps.

For fans ofdark mode in Android apps, you'll want to keep checking the Play Store for an update to Google Maps.

Google is finally adding a true dark mode throughout the entire app. Huzzah! Prior to the latest update, Google Maps only offered a dark mode when you were actively using navigation mode. It was better than nothing, sure, but it wasn't ideal.

Once Google Maps updates on your Android phone or tablet, you can turn dark mode on all the time by going toSettings>Themeand then selectAlways in Dark Theme.

Scheduling messages is a convenient feature.

If you're not already using Google Messages as your default text messaging app, this might finally get you to make the switch. Google is rolling out an update that adds the option to schedule when a message is sent. Scheduling messages is especially useful if you don't want to bother someone at the wrong time because they're in a different time zone, or you know they're busy at work. Or you can use it to schedule a message canceling plans that you regret even making.

Once your Messages app receives the latest update, you can start to compose a message just like you always do, but instead of tapping on the send button -- long-press it. A menu will pop up, asking when you want it sent. It's as easy as that.

TalkBack is also receiving a hefty update.

Google's TalkBack accessibility feature is getting a big update to help blind or low vision users navigate and use their Android devices. There are new gestures, navigation options, spoken feedback and menus.

We have more information about theTalkBack update here. If you want to check it out for yourself, make sure to check for app and service updates in the Play Store.

Google is also adding new features to Android Auto and Google Assistant. They're relatively minor updates, but worth taking note of.

Android Auto users are getting the ability to set custom wallpapers that are displayed on their vehicle's screen. Google is also adding voice-activated games that your passengers can play during long road trips. One of the games Google mentions is Jeopardy, which is always a hit. Finally, Google is adding shortcuts to the Android Auto launch screen that will make it easy to check the weather or quick access to contacts for messaging and calls.

Google Assistant is getting improvements when you use voice commands to interact with the digital assistant when your screen is off and the device is locked. Google says that the cards that show information are now bigger, making it easier to read responses from across the room. To ensure the feature is working as expected turn onLock Screen Personal Resultsin your Google Assistant settings page.

Google does big feature releases like this every quarter or so. For example,here are some features added to Google Assistantlast year. If you're someone who'd rather look forward, then check out thenew features we've found so far in Android 12. We also have a running list ofhidden features in Android that we love.

Discover the latest news and best reviews in smartphones and carriers from CNET's mobile experts.

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Google Maps is getting a new trick (plus 5 other Android features coming) - CNET