Ep 159: The future of privacy-safe advertising on Android

In this special episode of the Apptivate podcast, you’ll hear the latest news about Google’s Privacy Sandbox on Android – straight from the source. Pan Katsukis, the co-founder and CEO of Remerge, hosts a video chat with Amit Varia, Director of Product Management at Google, and Niv Klein, Product Team Lead at AppsFlyer. Together, they discuss their collaborative efforts to test and build a mobile advertising framework with solutions that allow privacy-safe retargeting on Android.

Find out how attribution, retargeting, and user acquisition can be done with the Protected Audience API, learn how it limits the sharing of user data with third parties, and find out how it operates without cross-app identifiers like advertising IDs. You’ll also get advice on what app businesses can do to prepare for the upcoming changes, why this is happening now, and what opportunities are to be expected from the new era of privacy-first mobile advertising.

Check the links below to watch the video, or tune in via you favorite podcast streaming channels:

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• What is Google’s Privacy Sandbox?
• Why is this shift happening now?
• Do you see other advantages to the new framework compared to where we are right now?
• How will Google advertising IDs change?
• How are attribution and retargeting being done in the Protected Audience API environment?
• How can we get everyone in the app ecosystem onboard?
• Is there anything app developers should be doing right now?
• What is the thinking behind the timeline to launch Android Privacy Sandbox?
• What is the vision of what app advertising will look like in five years?

• 3:05 What is Android Privacy Sandbox?
• 4:25 Why the shift in advertising privacy
• 8:15 Current use of Google advertising IDs
• 11:21 Protected Audience API (formerly Fledge)
• 14:22 How will attribution be done
• 17:09 Changes in retargeting mechanisms
• 18:55 Changes in user acquisition
• 20:40 TEEs: Trusted Execution Environments
• 23:02 SDK run time
• 25:10 Getting the app industry on board
• 33:34 Steps app developers can take now
• 36:11 Preparing for the release of Android Privacy Sandbox
• 38:52 The vision of privacy-safe advertising

(4:00-4:11) Amit Varia: “I’d love for everyone to think of these technologies as building blocks that app developers and ad tech companies can use to build their private advertising solutions.”

(4:52-5:05) Amit Varia: “Users are becoming more aware of how valuable their own data is, how it’s being collected, and how it’s being used. As a result, we’re seeing people demand more transparency and control over their data, especially when it comes to online advertising.”

(14:45-15:23) Niv Klein: “Generally speaking, the main move in attribution is from device-level reporting to aggregated reports. So, a bit similar to what we experienced in iOS, but the difference is that we’ll have a designated attribution API on the Android Privacy Sandbox that will allow for both aggregated reports—according to very flexible aggregation data levels—and event-level reports to communicate events at the click ID to the partner ad networks.”