February 27, 2023 Update: Privacy Sandbox on Android has moved forward to their Beta testing phase. Google Ads product teams will evaluate the Beta privacy-preserving APIs. We will provide updates to our App campaign customers when we have more information.
Today, technology platforms are adapting to meet consumers’ and regulators’ expectations for online privacy. That’s why Android is joining the Privacy Sandbox initiative to develop privacy-preserving technologies that keep people’s information secure and help you deliver relevant ads experiences and gain actionable insights.
Since Android announced the development of its Privacy Sandbox in February 2022, Google Ads and Display & Video 360 product teams have reviewed Android’s initial proposals and developer previews for each Privacy Sandbox API. We plan to test any publicly released APIs, and we’re evaluating ways to incorporate these technologies into our product innovations for advertisers and publishers. Throughout this process, we—alongside others in the industry—are sharing detailed feedback with Android so that the new technologies help you reach the right audiences for your apps, and measure the results of your marketing campaigns accurately.
Like the rest of the Ad Tech community, our teams rely on public information to assess how the Privacy Sandbox APIs for Android can enable key marketing use cases while reducing reliance on tracking identifiers. Similar to the public commitments for the Privacy Sandbox on the web that Google will not self-preference its own ads products or sites, we will continue working with regulators to ensure that we take an open and inclusive approach that works for the broader apps ecosystem.
Incorporating these new technologies into our ads products will still take time to get right. But as an app marketer, you can already start taking steps to be ready for what’s next. For example, if you’re using Google Ads or Display & Video 360 you can start by adopting our privacy-safe solutions today. Build a foundation of consented first-party data with Google Analytics for Firebase so that you can better understand your customers and how they engage with your app. And when observable data is less available as users navigate across touchpoints, conversion modeling can help you fill in the gaps for a more accurate picture of your results.
Stay tuned for updates as we explore more ways to build private ad experiences on mobile apps. If you’d like to learn more about the Privacy Sandbox, watch this new video series where Google product leads answer frequently asked questions from the ads industry. And you can also stay up to date with the Privacy Sandbox roadmap for the web and Android for the latest information on the proposal designs and timelines from the teams leading those initiatives.
Posted by Sue Lai, Group Product Manager, App Ads Privacy