(New York) Google, following the example of Apple, wants to rethink its advertising targeting system on Android phones and tablets in order to limit the sharing of personal information collected by applications with third parties.
Updated yesterday at 2:52 p.m.
The goal is to strike a new balance between the growing demand for privacy demanded by users and regulators and the need to enable advertisers to fine-tune their ads at scale.
If 90% of the applications offered on its Google Play platform are free, it is largely thanks to advertisements, recalls Google on its blog on Wednesday.
The social network Facebook, for example, uses sophisticated tools to study the behavior of members of its network on the Internet and then suggest that advertisers specifically target the profiles most likely to be interested.
But “the industry must continue to evolve the way digital advertising works to improve user privacy,” Google acknowledges.
Apple has already embarked on this path for all devices running its iOS system, forcing mobile application publishers to ask their users if they want to be tracked once they exit the application.
The iPhone and iPad maker justified this change by respecting data privacy.
But it does not prevent the company itself from collecting information, and clearly harms companies like Facebook or Google which can no longer sell advertisements as well targeted as before.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, already estimates that this new rule will cost it $10 billion in revenue this year.
Any decision by Google on ad targeting will have far-reaching effects as around 70% of smartphones and tablets worldwide run its Android operating system. That of Apple, iOS, team about 25%.
Collaboration
For its new system, Google claims to want to improve respect for the privacy of users “without jeopardizing free access to content and services”.
“Other platforms have taken a different approach to ad privacy, sharply limiting the technologies used by developers and advertisers,” Google points out in a hint to Apple.
But this approach “is not effective” and “can lead to an even worse situation for user privacy and developer business,” the company said.
The group ensures that it will continue to offer the advertising tools currently on its platform “for at least two years”, the time to design, build and test the new tools.
He also promises to consult developers and regulators alike and to regularly share the progress of his work.
Google wants to find ways to limit data sharing with third parties and eliminate tools that track users as they switch between apps.
This allows an advertiser, for example, to bludgeon a user with the same ad across all apps they visit, says independent analyst Rob Enderle.
“The less advertisers can monitor what users are doing, the less value they get and the less they’re willing to pay for data,” he says.
But if Google reduces the ability to share information with third parties, the group will a priori still be able to use the data collected when Internet users use its search engine or connect to one of its services (Gmail, Google Maps, etc. ), also remarks Mr. Enderle.
Facebook probably has a lot more to lose.
In any case, a social network manager, Graham Mudd, praised Google’s collaborative approach on Twitter, which he found “encouraging”.
Google had already announced in early 2020 that it wanted, within two years, to eliminate “cookies” from websites from its browser, these small electronic identification modules that follow Internet users as they browse the web to better target advertising.
But the group had to push back its schedule in order to better take into account the feedback from the various players in the sector.
He also had to agree to the British competition authority, which feared that Google would strengthen its grip on the market, not to favor its own advertising services when third-party cookies are eliminated.