Commentary

Google Not Yet Invited To Join Ad Industry Group To Solve A Problem It Helped To Create

The Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media, announced Tuesday, includes trade groups, brands and ad-tech companies and aims to convince browser and platform developers, such as Apple and Google to reconsider their decisions made around  tracking, tracing and ad targeting across websites and apps.

Challenges continue to mount as Google and Apple change the way browsers and operating systems handle ad targeting and tracking.

Google has not yet been invited to join the group as a strategic partner to help the industry solve the problem it helped to create. Nor has Apple. 

"We plan to invite both companies to work with the Partnership around constructive solutions to these addressability challenges, but the Partnership needed to formalize its mission and participants before initiating that dialogue," a spokesperson told Inside Performance via email. 

A spokesperson for Google said the company's "been engaged with the organization to advise on our privacy principles as well as deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome, and we look forward to continuing to engage with them as well as others across the ecosystem,--publishers, developers, advertisers [and others]."

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Apple’s move to restrict tracking dates back about a decade, when the company began to prohibit the ability to link the actions taken by more than one device to a unique identifier. At that time, Google said it would discontinue support of third-party cookies in Chrome.

Kantar, publishers and ad-tech companies initially began separately to solve the problem.

On Tuesday, advertising industry groups, brands and agencies launched an initiative to address new standards to address these challenges.

The Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media aims to “advance and protect critical functionalities like customization and analytics for digital media and advertising, while safeguarding privacy and improving the consumer experience.”

Bill Tucker, Group EVP leading the Data, Technology, and Measurement Practices at the ANA, will serve as the executive director.

Dennis Buchheim, President of IAB Tech Lab, will oversee the Partnership’s technical standards efforts, contributing advertising product experience, while Stu Ingis, Chairman of Venable LLP, will lead the Partnership’s legal and policy working group.

Trade bodies, advertisers, agencies, publishers and ad-tech companies are the governing partners that make up the Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media.

The 4As, the Association of National Advertisers/ANA, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, IAB Tech Lab, Network Advertising Initiative, and World Federation of Advertisers are part of the effort, along with brands and agencies.

Major brands include Ford, General Motors, IBM, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever. Agencies include IPG Mediabrands company UM and Publicis Media.

Ad Tech partners include Adobe, MediaMath, and The Trade Desk. Publishers include NBC Universal.

Initial principles include:

--  Consumer privacy should remain a foundational pillar of the solution by providing consumers with meaningful transparency and controls, giving the marketplace the tools to understand consumer preferences and the ability to abide by those preferences.

--  Consumers should have access to diverse and competitive content offerings, supported by their choices to engage with digital advertising in exchange for content and services.

--  Business operations, including ad targeting, ad delivery, frequency capping, campaign management, analytics, cross-channel deployment, optimization, and attribution should be sufficiently supported and improved upon through better technological and policy standards for all critical use cases.

--  Solutions should be standardized and interoperable for consumers and businesses across browsers, devices, and platforms, subject to applicable privacy laws and guidelines and to the extent it is reasonably technically feasible, efficient, effective, and improved over existing technology.

-- All browsers, devices, and platforms should allow equal access, free from unreasonable interference, to the new solutions.

--  Companies that utilize the resulting solutions should follow industry and legal privacy standards, with strong accountability and enforcement for those that violate the standards. 

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