Goodbye Floc 038 Hello Topics

Goodbye Floc 038 Hello Topics

Management Summary

FloC was developed in response to increasing privacy regulations and the elimination of Google's third-party cookies and is part of the Privacy Sandbox. However, thanks to the experience gained within the FloC studies, a new tool has now been presented: Topics. Topics is intended to be the solution to “cookieless tracking” (or the “post-cookie world”)  and enable interest-based advertising.

How Topics works?

Google analyzes the user’s browser history and uses the pages visited to determine topics that are obviously of current interest to the user. Based on your interests, the corresponding advertising can then be played out. These topics are openly presented to the user and can be edited at any time, thus deactivating unwanted interests. Topics thus offers complete transparency and control over your own data.

The topics are only saved for three weeks. The topics are saved on your own device without external servers being involved. This also means that different topics can be suggested to the same user on each device if their surfing behavior differs.

Google takes the utmost care when it comes to topics; sensitive categories such as gender and origin are not taken into account. Through browser-controlled storage, the user can compare to tracking techniques such as: B. Third-party cookies to better control and understand data transfer. The collected interests offer companies that advertise online an alternative to covert tracking methods such as browser fingerprinting.

Keyword Cookie Topics
Image: Comparison of the data collected that users can understand with 3rd party cookies (left) and topics (right). Source: Google

According to Google, Topics will soon be introduced to developers and available for testing and this time will also be rolled out in Europe.

The rollout will show how well the system works in practice. However, you should prepare fully now for the disappearance of 3rd party cookies. Read more about the Post Cookie era here.

Any questions? Our analytics experts will be happy to support you: kontakt@e-dialog.group

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