| Last week, Google doubled down on the FLoC initiative emerging from the Chrome Privacy Sandbox (essentially a way of tracking online behavior by like-minded cohort rather than by individual) and also said it would not build or use alternate identifiers for tracking. A line is being drawn with Apple, Google, and the proponents of first-party-data-based identifiers on one side; Facebook on the other. We’ve had a lot of comments come over the virtual transom. Here are just a few: “This is going to fuel the next generation of ad tech solutions trying to find alternative solutions to find audiences at scale without 3rd party cookies. This fragmentation, which is already happening, will take time to evaluate the effectiveness. Marketers will likely be confused and will need to run lots of experiments to find what gives them comparable or better ROAS than targeting solutions based on 3rd party cookies. Google seems pretty confident in FLOCs, we’ll see.” Patrick O’Leary, founder and CEO, Boostr “Google’s announcement today is a wake-up call for marketers to break their third-party data addictions and instead turn to review the data strategies within their organizations. First-party, privacy-friendly datasets are richer and more impactful when it comes to improving campaign performance. They also stand the test of time while strengthening the trust between the customer and the business.” Gregg Johnson, CEO, Invoca “Adtech finally saw the other shoe drop with Google announcing it won’t use or develop alternate third-party tracking methods. Collectively, Apple and Google’s privacy moves leave Facebook on its own lamenting the old ways of tracking, while adtech innovators developing workarounds for third-party cookies now face a siloed future. More important for brands, today’s news means that both marketers and advertisers will increasingly rely on first-party and zero-party data that customers willingly provide in the course of their direct interactions.” Mike Herrick, SVP of Technology, Airship Herrick also points out that there’s no reason, based on the logic of its announcement, that Google shouldn’t follow Apple’s IDFA move by forcing consumer opt-in for app activity tracking on Android devices. Read about the Google announcement here. | 