Several firms have recently tested Privacy Sandbox, the suite of solutions Google has offered the programmatic ecosystem to use instead of third-party cookies. Along with highlighting some familiar complaints, the firms raised new gripes about how protocols are lacking.
Criteo, Index Exchange, NextRoll and MiQ all published public reports in the past two weeks detailing the results of their experiments, in response to calls from the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority. The IAB Tech Lab also posted the final version of its analysis on Privacy Sandbox in late June.
New complaints include how it doesn’t support a full range of digital advertising, it makes the auctions run too slow and it appears to be opaque.
The familiar gripes include how publishers will likely make less money with Privacy Sandbox than they currently do with third-party cookies. Criteo said publishers will likely lose 60% of their revenue, while Index Exchange noted a 33% decline in ad prices from the current status quo.
They also note that not enough firms are testing the solutions to make research fully representative.
We’ve read all the reports and summarized the three key issues firms have with Google’s cookie replacement.
Privacy Sandbox is limited in its support of digital advertising
Privacy Sandbox covers display ads, but it doesn’t make it easy to run video ads. Nor does it offer tools to send requests for ads of multiple sizes, Index Exchange noted in its analysis. It also doesn’t have functionality for traffic shaping, which is controlling the flow of ad requests within a publisher’s ecosystem—an important tool for adtech firms to filter inventory, Criteo observed.
“[The Privacy Sandbox application-programming interfaces] are not designed to offer one-to-one replacements for third-party cookies or cross-site identifiers,” a Google spokesperson said.
Privacy Sandbox covers open web programmatic, but publishers and buyers are increasingly looking to transact via direct deals. Sandbox doesn’t provide infrastructure for this popular form of ad buying, Index Exchange notes.