Google Privacy Sandbox: Signal Loss And Trepidation
Nearly every conversation about advertising, marketing and media and entertainment at CES took place under the dread cloud of Google deprecating the use of third-party cookies in its Chrome browser for digital advertising.
The company’s “Privacy Sandbox” introduced privacy-focused targeting solutions without relying on third-party cookies. The company has begun introducing the Privacy Sandbox by deprecating cookie-use for advertising in 1% (or 33M users worldwide) of all Chrome browsers on January 4. It plans to expand that rate to 100% by year-end (even though it is more likely that goal will only be reached some time in 2025).
The Privacy Sandbox only affects a relatively small portion of the market – browser-based advertising. But for those vendors whose core business is in browser-based display and video advertising, the consequences may be dire. The fact that we don’t know how dire the consequences will be, and how exactly they will play out, explains why discussions around signal loss at CES were tinged with trepidation.
Early numbers on the effects of the Privacy Sandbox published by Raptive’s Paul Bannister show a CPM decline of about 30% for non-cookied inventory, about what I expected. No word yet on a potential decline of the fill rate. But we must expect that the fill rate will decline in tandem with ad effectiveness, lowering revenues even more. In better news, Raptive expects numbers to improve as companies get used to the new technology.
“Privacy Sandbox is […] not good for the open Internet. And I don’t even see how it’s good for Google. All those brilliant minds inside of a nearly $2 trillion company couldn’t do better than that?”
Jeff Green, Founder and CEO, The Trade Desk
Be this as it may, it dawns on the industry that many companies are not ready yet, and that workarounds will not be able to fully mitigate the impact of third-party cookie deprecation. Even The Trade Desk is reported to look at integrations with Privacy Sandbox APIs. That is even though the company is a vocal critic of Google’s solution and is a leading proponent of Universal ID 2.0, a single sign-on (#SSO) network designed to authenticate users without cookies. Here is what Jeff Green, The Trade Desk’s founder and CEO thinks about Google’s Privacy Sandbox (from the company’s publication The Current): “Privacy Sandbox is not innovative. It’s not good for the open Internet. And I don’t even see how it’s good for Google. All those brilliant minds inside of a nearly $2 trillion company couldn’t do better than that?” The reason for The Trade Desk’s step is likely that the penetration of usership with SSOs – be it UID 2.0 here in the States or ID5 in Europe- is too small to meaningfully mitigate the effect of cookie deprecation.
Apple’s Vision Pro: A Device Nobody Needs And No-One Can Afford
Even though Apple has not attended CES as an exhibitor in over 30 years, the company did announce the release date of its Apple Vision Pro virtual reality (VR) headset during CES for an extra PR bump. It will be available February 2, with pre-orders being accepted January 19.
The hype around the Vision Pro suggests that it and similar devices will revolutionize the way we use the Internet, and take us to whole new heights of productivity, entertainment, information and communication. That’s why several agencies and brands showcased VR advertising and marketing applications at CES.
But the hype ignores several flies in the ointment. To begin with, there is no mass consumer VR application in sight far and wide, save for a handful of gamers and industrial, medical and educational use. As far as the consumer mass market is concerned, VR is a solution in search of a problem.
Secondly, the technology is clunky. VR devices often cause headaches, dizziness and disorientation. The Vision Pro has already become the butt of jokes on how its sheer weight will collapse your spine. Proponents of the technology argue that once the technology’s kinks have been worked out, applications will appear. Perhaps. But if they do, they are still several years out. It seems to me though that if potential VR mass applications hid in plain sight, we would know about them by now.
Thirdly, devices are pricey. At a starting price of $3,499, and without a clear application, the Apple Vision Pro for now is more for well-heeled technology mine dogs (AKA “early adopters”) and those that would like to have a status symbol sitting on their mantlepiece. But at least the high price point might help finance VR research and development.
For now, the Apple Vision Pro is more for well-heeled technology mine dogs.
All in all, one senses strong “Newton” vibes when looking at the Apple Vision Pro. (For the under-50 crowd, the Newton was Apple’s attempt at creating a personal digital assistant [PDA] nearly 30 years ago. It was a breakthrough-technology device, yet not capable enough to avoid its failure as a product.)
These three challenges explain why worldwide VR device sales numbers have been in the single digit millions for years (equivalent to about two tenth of a percent of the total number of Internet users worldwide), with nary an upward trend to see.
Nevertheless, as if in a death march to the sea, Apple and Meta continue to plow tens of billions of dollars into the technology. In Meta’s case, to present something that looks like Second Life.
Rabbit R1 Ai Internet Device – Why Replace One Hand-Held Device With Another?
Also in the “new Internet devices that may change marketing” category, Rabbit Inc. introduced the Rabbit R1, a small hand-held device tethered to your smartphone that is supposed to make using your smartphone’s apps easier and smoother using AI, voice recognition and a scroll wheel.
The R1 features a beautiful industrial design, and the company launched a marketing campaign to match its good looks, reminiscent of Apple’s best efforts.
But neither can hide the fact that it is not clear why one would buy one handheld gadget just to replace another one (and you still need to keep your smartphone in your pocket). While the idea is to make your phone more usable, the R1’s features and functionality are still quite limited. And even if they weren’t, how much better can they be than iOS or Android? What’s more, the only reason why the Rabbit R1 exists in the first place is because Apple can’t get Siri to work as well as it should. As soon as that happens, there is no reason to own an R1 anymore.
None of this has deterred 40,000 intrepid tech bros and sis’es to shell out $199 each for the R1. Four batches of 10,000 devices each sold out in a little more than a week. I guess loving tech for tech’s sake is alive and well in Silicon Valley.
More interesting as a novel way to use the Internet than the Rabbit R1 is Humane’s AI Pin device, which the company introduced in November 2023. A stand-alone device designed to replace your smartphone, it works a little like a Star Trek communicator, featuring AI and voice recognition. As opposed to a smartphone (and the R1) you attach your AI Pin to your top, keeping your hands free. It also features a beautiful industrial design accompanied by a slick marketing campaign. But even though it has greater potential than the R1, at a $699 price tag, it will sell slower than it.
The biggest question of them all is this: Where is Apple? Why does it allow itself to be upstaged by small scrappy startups? Why does it launch a VR device that is more of a proof of concept rather than a device that reimagines the personal communications and computation device from the ground up? Where is the innovation?
Where is Apple? Why does it allow itself to be upstaged by small scrappy startups? Where is the innovation?
Whether or not these next-gen devices are useful yet or not is not that important – what is important is that they show us a glimpse of how we will use the Internet a decade from now. In many cases, we will use it with devices that don’t feature a display anymore. This means a lot of advertising will have to morph from speaking at customers to speaking with customers, in an actual dialog, perhaps based on large language model-based (LLM). This is not trivial. Just consider that Amazon has tried for almost a decade to make the Echo devices and Alexa profitable but had to concede recently that it had failed to do so.
A Fresh Start For Extreme Reach
Extreme Reach, best known for being the leading content rights management platform, has gone through a spring cleaning since hiring Louisa Wong as new CEO back in June of 2023. The company unveiled a new product line-up and a new corporate identity at CES, renaming itself into “XR” to communicate to the industry that it has branched out to managing the entire creative value chain with a focus on data enrichment and AI, all part of a new, unified platform.
U of Digital and Nielsen Partner For Digital Marketing Education
U of Digital, Shiv Gupta and Myles Younger’s company offering digital advertising and marketing technology education, and Nielsen announced a partnership at CES making U of Digital’s classes available to Nielsen’s more than 44,000 employees worldwide. A nice score for U of Digital, and much deserved.
The Most Beautiful New Device At CES
The most beautiful new device at CES was Samsung’s Micro LED Display – a transparent screen one can look through and look at from both the back and the front. Talk about “transparent technology”! Pure beauty, even if no consumer applications come to mind readily. This could have a big future in OOH and in-store advertising.
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