Origin Trials

Change is constant in digital marketing but 2022 looks set to be a year where landmark shifts, including ID-less advertising and contextual targeting, will be formed. Three of RTB House’s in-house experts predict the huge changes on the horizon.

Six months ago, during IETF 111, Google engineers made it clear that they were approaching a new iteration of FLoC, which was related to site topics. Yesterday, they finally announced Topics API. The ad topics concept has also been explored by Meta engineers in their Ad Topic Hints proposal, which builds on user feedback to displayed ads. Also, the PAURAQUE proposal from NextRoll was proposed in such a way that users could define topics which are interesting for them and can be used for personalization.

The testing season of cookieless tools has started with the announcement of Origin Trials for the Privacy Sandbox proposals. Adtech is now filled with various opportunities for testing – contextual targeting, identity solutions, first-party publisher’s audience data, or group-based methods. It is high time to leave feedback about specific tools in the places where it matters.

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.

Just two days after publishing Topics API, Google shared more details about the FLEDGE API specification for the upcoming Origin Trials. It is definitely a positive move, as it improves the industry’s understanding of the scope of tests that will be possible in the upcoming months. The specification includes essential features for advertising efficiency and utility, such as those created by RTB House – Product-level TURTLEDOVE and Outcome-based TURTLEDOVE. Sadly, the testing phase timeline hasn’t been updated for months now, so a more detailed timeline is still unavailable.

In this Media Review, we describe Google’s announcement on the Single Origin Trial, Google’s Header Bidding, considerations about FLEDGE, and Tim Cook’s call for a federal data privacy law.