The internet is changing, including how much we pay for content and the ads and brands we see.
That’s because Apple and Google, two hugely influential tech companies, are rolling out privacy protections that hinder marketers from gaining access to our data when they show us ads. The changes have major repercussions for online advertising, which are a business foundation for the free apps and websites that many of us use, like Facebook, TikTok and the Weather Channel. Those sites and apps now have to come up with new ways to show ads or make money.
Here’s what that means for you.
What’s happening?
For decades, advertisers relied on “cookies,” pieces of code planted in web browsers that can follow our personal web browsing to track us online and show us relevant ads. When smartphones came along, marketers also used trackers inside mobile apps to follow people across apps and websites.
These advertising technologies became incredibly potent and effective — if you shopped for shoes, shoe ads would follow you around the internet — but with major downsides. It enabled marketers to build hyper-realistic profiles of us that were hardly anonymous. It also opened doors for bad actors to steal people’s data and spread misinformation.
Widespread concern over online privacy in recent years started an industrywide discussion about what to do about this tracking. Apple and Google have stepped in with different solutions.
What are Apple and Google doing?
In 2017, Apple debuted a version of its Safari web browser that prevented the technology used by marketing companies to follow people from site to site. This year, Apple also released App Tracking Transparency, a pop-up window in iPhone apps that gives people the choice to not be tracked across apps and websites.
In 2019, Google announced the Privacy Sandbox, a set of ideas for developing a more private web. The company has plans for its Chrome web browser to block tracking cookies in 2023 in favor of a new system for advertisers to target us with ads.
That system might be one called Federated Learning of Cohorts, or FLOC. It involves grouping people together based on their interests. If you visit websites related to tennis and dogs, you may be placed into a cohort of people who share those interests. As soon as a website loads, it scans the browser for an identification code to see what group you belong to. The website then can decide what types of ads to show your group.
In theory, this would be less invasive than today’s tracking methods because advertisers wouldn’t have access to a cookie that contains your personal browsing history.
Because of the sheer reach of Apple’s and Google’s products — Google’s Chrome browser is No. 1 in the world, and Apple’s iPhone is the best-selling phone — advertisers …….
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/technology/personaltech/internet-privacy-chrome-safari.html