With the digital landscape continuing to evolve, Google’s privacy efforts reached another milestone with their announcement of the change from Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) to the Topics API. This change aims to address the pressing need for privacy while still allowing for interest-based advertising. 

What is the Google Topics API?

At the time of writing this article, Google Topics API is at the beginning of the discussion phase to collect and execute the feedback. Its design is not yet final and the below is based on what we know so far.

In Google’s words, “the Topics API is a Privacy Sandbox mechanism designed to preserve privacy while allowing a browser to share information with third parties about a user's interests.” 

Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative aims to create technologies that simultaneously protects people's privacy online and gives companies and developers tools to build thriving digital businesses. Its core aim is to phase out support for third-party cookies when new solutions are in place. Currently, there are several proposals for strengthening privacy controls, showing relevant content and ads, measuring digital ads and reducing fraud. One of these proposals is the Topics API, as part of the relevant content category.

With the Topics API, your web browser can determine several topics, such as music, food, sports, travel, tech - representing your top interests in a week based on your browsing history. Importantly, this information is recorded on the user's device and users can view, modify, or disable these topics- giving them control over their data. These topics will be kept only for three weeks, and then the old topics will be deleted. 

The Topics API can then give API callers (such as ad tech platforms) access to a user's topics of interests, but without revealing additional information about the user's browsing activity.

To analyse this solution, we have investigated privacy, scale, ease of adoption and sustainability.

1.  Privacy: The big difference between Topics API and third-party cookies is the type of data shared. Third-party cookies track users across multiple websites and share this information with third parties. In contrast, Topics API will only share your general interests, rather than granular behaviour across multiple sites and it gives users control over their data. With this approach, interest-based audience targeting can remain relevant, while increasing privacy and data protection needs for individual users.
2. Scalability: With third-party cookies on the way out, first-party data is now more valuable than ever. While there have been some concerns about the broadness of topic categories, fearing a loss in targeting accuracy, the overriding opinion is cautious optimism - as advertisers are keen to explore new privacy-friendly ways to reach their audiences. The initial rollout will feature around 350 topics, expected to expand into the thousands, which will allow advertisers to expand or narrow down based on budgets, offering, and topics performance insights.
3. Ease of adoption: Based on what we know so far, the use of the Topics API looks relatively simple for advertisers. Google Topics API labels each site with high-level categories. To enable better contextual advertising, it will choose topics based on a user’s most frequent browsing behaviour and visits. Next, it will share this data (and not that of the user) with advertisers and website owners which can then be selected for targeting. Furthermore, programmatic advertisers can also access the Topics API while the ad call is still on. It’s possible through ad vendors to make advertising even easier and more effective so you can target the audience from multiple channels.
4. Longevity: As the digital advertising landscape evolves in response to privacy concerns and regulatory changes, the sustainability of the Google Topics API becomes even more evident, as it offers a pathway to maintain interest-based advertising without relying on intrusive data collection practices. Understanding your audience will remain key, and first-party data will become even more important if advertising for a niche audience; however, from what we know so far, topics will be a good way to reach people with an interest in your offering.

Conclusion

Google's transition to the Topics API represents a significant shift towards more privacy and user-control. It's an acknowledgment of the importance of balancing effective advertising with the need to protect user privacy. Advertisers must adapt to these changes, finding innovative ways to engage audiences within this new framework.

As the Topics API progresses, it's crucial for all players in the digital advertising space to stay informed, agile, and ready to embrace the new era of privacy-conscious advertising. Chrome is expected to phase out cookies entirely by Q3 2024 so it’s important that advertisers test and learn ahead of time, to get familiar with the new targeting capabilities and their performance.