Kacper Polewiak

The cookieless future is fast approaching. This decision by Google, sparked by very real privacy concerns, removes a key personalization capability for advertisers: third-party cookies. To counteract this, Google has been building a series of tools to replicate their functionality, and today we’re going to dive into one of them: Google Topics API.

Google is coming for your cookies, and not the tasty kind lying safely in a tin in your kitchen, but the third-party ones that sit in your browser, watching, waiting, and storing all kinds of information. This has major implications, some good and some bad, for marketers and consumers alike. It also means that many of our old tools will soon become obsolete. However, you don’t need to crack open your tin of real cookies and start stress-eating yet. There are plenty of new tools on their way, one of which we’re going to get into today: The Protected Audience API.

In early 2020, Google first announced its intention to retire third-party cookies from Chrome. Despite numerous twists and turns, one thing remains certain: the relevance of third-party cookies is on a downward trend across most browsers, and this will likely affect Chrome as well. This development has marketers worried about the future of personalized and relevant advertising. The good news is they don’t need to be concerned. RTB House has managed to fine-tune Chrome’s new cookieless tool—the Privacy Sandbox—so that it can tailor ads to specific users while protecting their privacy. How is this possible, and what role does the Product-Level Turtledove play in the process? Let’s dive into it.

In this media review, you can find out more about the latest Google announcements concerning the 3rd-party cookie phase out being postponed until 2024 [Note: In April 2024, it was further postponed until early 2025] and the tests expansion for the Privacy Sandbox for the Web, the news connected with Google’s Origin Trials and Topics API, as well as the reboot to the EU’s digital rulebook by the European parliament—DSA and DMA.

In this Media Review, we bring together 5 stories, including Apple facing a new lawsuit over its data collection practices, the Privacy Sandbox expansion for web testing in 2023, and the EU’s Digital Services Act entering into force.

In this Media Review, we bring together 4 stories, including the positive reception for FLEDGE, the French privacy regulator fining a game developer for leveraging IDFV (Identifier For Vendors), and the European Center for Digital Rights unifying the “dark patterns” interpretation in terms of cookie consent pop-up windows.