Privacy Advocates Want It To FLoC Off

Privacy Advocates Want It To FLoC Off

15 April 2021 |

Data, Insights, Privacy

We have all heard about the Cookie Apocalypse & what the deprecation of third-party cookie is likely to mean for advertisers, but browsers and privacy advocates are telling Google to FLoC off (otherwise known as Federated Learning of Cohorts).

The industry is scrambling to find alternative ways in which they can continue to serve targeted ads albeit with some anonymity.

There have been several alternatives that have gained traction since Google announced it will cease third party cookies in its Chrome browser early next year.

  • The Trade Desk has its own Unified ID 2.0 which is built from hashed and encrypted email addresses.
  • Liveramp has released an Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS) that enables people-based advertising on authenticated, cookie-less inventory across the open internet

 

In addition to these releases, Google has released its own solution called FLoC– Federated Learning of Cohorts. In layman’s terms Google will no longer allow advertisers to target individuals, rather Advertisers can target people who have shared interests, or qualities in cohorts & this will prevent advertisers from knowing your identity.

Google has claimed in testing, FLoC is 95% as effective as third-party cookies. In practice it is not yet known if those claims hold up.

Much has been said about Googles plan to introduce FLoC. DuckDuckGo & Brave browsers have announced they will plan to block Googles FLoC stating that they have concerns that all Chrome users are automatically opted into it.

Privacy advocates EFF have labelled FLoC a terrible idea, stating that the core design of FLoC involves sharing new information with advertisers and that it creates new privacy risk such as Fingerprinting.

More will be made clear about Floc and the privacy sandbox as we edge closer to January 2022. ADMATIC is dedicated to providing the best advertising solutions for our clients and we have several partnerships ready to ensure we continue to drive effective advertising campaigns.