With third-party cookies on the way out, today, Google released new details on its proposed alternative, FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts), with the big takeaway being that FLoC has the potential to be just as good as cookies.
With FLoC, thousands of Chrome users are grouped into cohorts based on each individual’s browsing behavior. The browser uses machine learning algorithms to develop cohorts and shapes them by the sites each person visits. This includes site URLs, page content and more. Over time, the browser updates the cohort as each user travels the web and their behavior changes.
Critically, all of these behavioral inputs are kept locally, in the user’s browser, and aren’t uploaded elsewhere else. The browser only exposes the total cohort, though each cohort is well distributed to represent thousands of people.
The goal here is privacy, without losing interest-based ad-targeting. Chrome will group people together with similar browsing habits, allowing ad tech companies, advertisers and publishers to observe the habits of large groups instead of the activity of individuals, and target them accordingly.
With today’s announcement, Google expressed total confidence in FLoC’s ability to replace third-party cookies, releasing the results of the first test of its alternative. According to a blog post by Google’s Chetna Bindra, Group Product Manager, User Trust and Privacy, “When it comes to generating interest-based audiences, FLoC can provide an effective replacement signal for third-party cookies. Our tests of FLoC to reach in-market and affinity Google Audiences show that advertisers can expect to see at least 95% of the conversions per dollar spent when compared to cookie-based advertising.”
Bindra goes on to say the company is “encouraged” by the initial tests and the potential value it affords users (privacy), publishers (monetization) and advertisers (targeting).
The reaction to Google’s test was mixed.
CafeMedia’s Paul Bannister says Google’s FLoC results are “all based on simulations that Google is running and not real in-browser true testing,” with others wondering if Google would release details on the test’s methodology.
Simulmedia’s Dave Morgan applauded the move, saying, “Finally, [the] industry is getting back to the much-more sensible, transparent and user-friendly origins of audience-based targeting – targeting by generalized cohorts.”
Whatever your opinion, with Chrome owning nearly 70% of the world’s browser market, FLoC is poised to be a major piece of the cookie-less ecosystem for advertisers, publishers, vendors, and users. This represents “the future of how our ads and measurement products will work on the web,” says Google’s Bindra.
Google plans to make FLoC-based cohorts available for public testing in March and expects to begin testing FLoC-based cohorts with advertisers in Google Ads sometime in Q2.
