Deep-dive into Google Privacy Sandbox. Same disaster as Apple ATT? When is it happening? (#57)

[Music] welcome everyone this is no gaming podcast two and a half Gamers session number 57 we are sharing actionable insights dropping Knowledge from our day-to-day user acquisition game design adoration jobs this is well we are dropping Knowledge from UA this uh today so we're definitely not discussing the latest news uh but we're having so much fun still this is 4 a.m conference discussion Vibe so let's not take it too seriously and as I said uh today we're going to talk out more or less UA is this is special privacy sandbox session with Kate love joy and L Anon welcome thank you for coming so Kate you were here before um so great to great to have you back like you're the yeah the the fresh phase in in on our podcast let's start with the quick intro

so please let's start with Kate and then like you're you're next so how what are you doing uhh and how did you how did you end up in in games or well yeah I guess we are gaming podcast so how do you end up in gaming industry yeah for sure so I'm super happy to be back I had a lot of fun last time talking about iOS and ATT and here I am again talking about Android this time um so yeah my name is Kate Lovejoy I'm the US managing director and COO of the targeting business at adic I worked in advertising for the past 10 years or so and the better part of that time in mobile games so specifically yay supporting uh yeah supporting mobile game marketers and for targeting and and user acquisition nice so how did you end up in games uh or you know I started at a company called cross install that had a real focus on I think that's where we first worked together yeah yeah I think so yeah yeah I think so that was a long

time ago it was time that was my my first exposure like how about how about yourself yeah so happy to to be here as well for for the first time so I'm I'm Lou kto I'm the chief product officer at addictive and I've been in ntech for the past eight years and focused on games a bit bit more recently so I I started I started on mobile gaming with with team where it's been our Focus for the last few years and it's really been exciting so far nice it's great okay so uh so our dear dear listeners as you might noticed I changed uh uh Felix and yakob or well replaced fix and yob because they don't know anything about the Privacy sand books so we are talking about privacy sand books what the hell is private sbook can you explain please and go as deep as you can it's uh it's really

interesting story not that many information still out there so uh let's yeah let's kick it off with like a warm-up question yeah so what is private SBX so first of all it's a it's something big so it's a overall it's a it's a technical project from from Google um so it it targets both Chrome and Android actually and so the goal is to is to add features to those platforms so that advertisers can run uh advertising campaigns and especially performance advertising campaigns but without uh using device identifiers uh so on Chrome we're speaking about the third party cookie where there's already been an official replication announcement and for Android it's a what we call the advertising ID G ID which is not yet officially uh uh debated but

it's it's most likely going to happen in the in the next few years as well so Android privacy sbox is about that it's about maintaining all the performance advertising use cases even without uh device IDs okay so thing is like do you think people care if uh if the about the Privacy that's the first thing because uh Apple did this as well and they say oh well this is great for for players and for people and everybody I'm talking to they say well I don't care honestly are you talking to a lot of uh marketers M maybe no but like the players in general also I guess there is maybe a little bit of bias because they are developers as well but I'm talking also non-developers and they say oh well when someone asked me oh well uh do I care about the idfa I didn't even know what idfa that's that's their answer immediately

so do you think they care that much or is it really necessary I think users care about privacy I think if you asked someone do I care about being tracked around the web around the web on my phone they would probably say yes I think you're right that they don't really know that nobody they don't know the specifics they don't know that there's a particular ID that's following them around uh everywhere but I think what Google's done and you know we might get into this a little bit later is created a more elegant solution for for privacy for addressing privacy the whole aim with with fledge is that you don't have to expose your ID at the user level but you can still participate in you know targeted targeted ads okay so how does how does it work like uh like the the whole privacy send books and so there's a there's kind of an overarching concept which is the fact that the uh um the personal data such as

the device ID today but it also covers other kind of of data coming from the phone should stay on the device um and not be shared to remote servers remote um infrastructure to be processed um away from the device so so that's really the the concept keep the personal data on the device it can be used but it has to stay on the device instead of being shared to to remote servers so very concretely app developers that work with the private sandbox uh they had the they can use some new apis provided by those platforms um to to ask to manage the marketing use cases that require a device ID like so we mentioned targeted ads it can also be um use cases around measurement like you know attribution of

attribution of posting sty so Ro measurement these kind of things that that's rely on today so those use cases you basically have a set of apis within Chrome within Android to manage the use case and uh and that's basically how it works so you have a um you have this abstraction level um Chrome is doing it for you Android is doing it for you and you don't have to uh to to collect the device ID because it's being used in the background without you having to to use it okay so why should we uh why should we kind of like pay pay attention to to to the Privacy send box and is it something that we need to actually take care of right now or we have some time yeah I mean I I think we we definitely have time here it's important to start paying attention to it I mean it's a another I think essential shift

in our in in our industry there are two things that I think will be will be important one is that you we're moving away from user level bid pricing and creative assignment so all of that is moving from the user level to the audience level so ad buyers will have to have that in mind um and I think that will have implications and the other thing is reporting does change so no longer real time unlimited reporting of of attributed conversions and Revenue but uh we'll have to adjust campaign pipelines so that doesn't mean we can start making those changes today right we we can't start uh start that so much but we can kind of have that in mind and and prepare for it um I think what you can do today is is start talking to your vendors that you're working with your advertising vendors most likely they have some sort of beta with Google that you can start partici start participating in okay and uh so do you think um

still there can be a few changes happening to like the whole framework of the Privacy s books or because what I'm trying to say is like I did a lot of preparation for at which was definitely not very useful so I'm trying to avoid spending so much time and resources to figure out everything just before beforehand so because if now I pay attention to it and then everything changes again like I'm basically no I think you're you're perfectly right and to be fair I think here we we're um we are following the same uh story okay to some extent the main difference is that uh you know the the for scad Network everything changed while it was already in production for all devices and here Google is actually doing it uh like before general admission right but you you're totally right anybody who would manage to digest

the whole documentation which is a would be a miracle by the way it's it would be it would probably be obsolete in in six months so so so yeah even though there's a there's there's a beta that's already live and available on on the real end user devices um specifications constraints um are changing almost on a monthly basis so so we are not we haven't reached like like phase of stability on the on the feature set today so when you say the beta is out like what what can you actually beta test what like how should you use it yeah well the the main uh the main features as we as we mentioned uh uh concerns targeted ads so what you can test is definitely trying to um to to show ads uh within this new framework

that's uh leveraging the new uh the new API so um uh privacy sendbox includes a feature called fledge that lets you define define uh audience uh audience rules so that you display ads only to users who have matched uh the rules that you expect um so this kind of of scenario you can test it you can test it um and and the other thing that you can EAS test is the reporting part the reporting is a the reporting feature of privacy sybox is similar to ESC Network reporting framework so it has a limited limited [Music] conversion values and and this kind of constraints so this is already something that you can try seeing if you get those conversions for re users who doing installs and post install events that's already usable okay and where can you where can you do all of these uh

interesting things because I can I can already see myself trying to explore this uh because it's while reporting and the targeting is kind of interesting thing yeah well that that's the that's the to be honest because yeah because there's there's a very complex technical environment to set up which includes a um many new components uh on Android side so so basically without having a uh really an SDK presence within within an app it's uh it's impossible to test today um you also need to have some kind of back end to process some some some some ad requests you know because and the creatives of course really private sybox embeds a whole a whole advertising mechanism uh and this includes uh mobile side codes backend code uh creative serving and of course also some um some

some some also backend features to to receive notifications of conversions and these kind of things so it's a it's a complex technical technical environment to to set up at the beginning uh so that's why as as Kate mentioned I think advertising vendors are are are trying to to spend time on it as soon as possible to get the technical environment up and running uh so that when you really have to use it in production you're not in a in a Russ okay okay so I would need to talk to the to the UA channels to see if I can uh I can explore the Privacy send books okay and are you already testing it I I guess well I guess you are right I hope so we are we are yeah nice any any initially interesting uh things that you can share uh uh besides that it's really complex but you know at and the scan is really complex as well it took me few months

maybe even a year to actually figure it out yeah um so so yeah we're definitely uh testing uh and and following all the updates uh you know thoroughly um we we were lucky enough to uh to to have like a privileged access to to the Google PMs and Engineers working on it I think as a as a play of mobile app targeting you know we will really have an advanced use case of targeted advertising so I think our inputs are useful for Google to actually test the technical limits of their um of their sandbox especially all this processing that that we are used to doing on our servers but it's now supposed to be done on the device um so that's that's really that's really I think a question mark still today for Google whether that's too much Computing for a device or not so I think here or inputs are are

useful so um so yeah in terms of of experience we mostly provide feedback on the on the features of the sandbox uh you know telling them whether uh they work the features work as expected um and uh and we also sometimes raise like higher level issues that are more related to our business an example is that uh for us uh for for Addictive which is a DS so we don't have any SDK presence today in Android app so as I said today it's a it's it's impossible to to use the sandbox without without having actually code running on the Android app I think that was a one of the topics that we raised so so we need to manage the audiences on the on behalf of advertisers however we don't have any SDK presence so you know we we need to to find a solution to potentially um you

would need to have create SDK for Addictive services and then Implement ask every client to implement it o absolutely absolutely so so that's the that's the scenario that we are that we're we're prepared for however uh we'd like to to suggest Google some Alternatives of course and uh and I think they you know they they're listening they of course have a plenty of um of constraints that we're unaware of but but overall you know they they just want to maintain the the business that they have today so so I think they're they're listening to to all the valuable input that we can provide on how to maintain the the business volume as it is today yeah so you're you're amongst the few companies uh that work with with Google checking the list like how how did they even get there it's like D's approach like hey guys uh I know you know you are a big player like like you said you're a big player in

Mobile uh gaming business you want to talk to you yeah exactly yeah go ahead I mean they they work with us on the supply side so we're we're buying on on Google and again their solution is really has a retargeting Focus right so with ATT if user out there's no there's no targeting and what has that led to it's led to um you know PR predictive retargeting on zero idfa users a that's what that's led to Google is actually trying to have a solution with fledge that allows for retargeting and so with that I think it was important to them to work with and reach out to retargeting Partners like us to talk through what that actually actually looks like how how does that yeah how does that cooperation look like actually uh do you have like a weekly calls you you fly to to to California to meet them face to face and talk about it to have a work show yeah we have regular meetings with

them on the calendar and they've also been willing to do workshops with our partners which has been super valuable great like everyone is trying to figure this out in real time like what do what is what are the implications of this and they've done workshops with us which has been amazing how's okay how's that workshop look like uh I would I'm very curious so you sit down with the with the team uh on Google and they are trying to explain what they're doing uh why that uh why is this important and uh and then get feedback or like how does that work yeah exactly so we we have like a direct contact over there who we kind of prepared materials with ahead of time decided what adic would speak to what they would speak to shared some feedback and uh then you know got on a call with some of our our top Partners nice okay how how's that uh like what kind of feedback you you are sending to to Google like hey guys well this is not working come on or well well we don't oh we don't want to implement SDK to every

every client yeah that's pretty much it b a bit of both so definitely sharing feedback on whether the the features that they roll out are working as expected but also some of our constraints to maintain the business uh how the performance looks I think that's also super important for them like to to have our feedback because we're running today some RAR retargeting campaigns that are Lage the device ID I think they're here they're keen on having our feedback about um performance with the private s box versus versus versus the the the the current the current way of doing Target advertising today so so that's a that's also something that they they they want to they want to hear about yeah I would like to hear about that as well what's the difference in in terms of performance if you can share obviously it's very ear so that's going to change

but still like that's that's interesting information yeah to be honest today it's like a low scale so it's you know statistically I don't know it's it's very if it's very significant however for sure as we said it's a a little bit like SK Network you have a limited uh reporting framework uh limited you know capabilities to to measure and therefore optimize on roas or would say um events that are far in the funnel so so of course you you get you get a bit more um uh you lose a little bit of of of performance on the way so I think it's just a just a matter of setting the right um the right threshold between uh between privacy and performance and uh I think that's so so what's the what's the what's the percentage what's the percentage tell me tell me a number no no nothing significant so far I really can't say anything relevant

okay okay so it's it's very low amount of data points for now okay got it got it got it but still it's kind of interesting that Google is actually talking to uh to companies uh so so would that be the only difference between the ATT and the Privacy send books that actually they care I guess well I don't know if they care a company cares but I mean for me the way I think about it is fundamentally Google is an advertising company and they're behaving accordingly they're operating accordingly with support for advertising okay absolutely I would add that uh there's a there's a major difference for R targeting which is a like when Apple introduced at there was basically no alternative for for targeted advertising on opdate out users here it's really a different approach 100% of Android users

stay uh stay eligible to targeted advertising it's just that you have to do it in a different way without using the device ID so I think that's uh that's very uh that's very an interesting approach uh for us because we we manage to u to accommodate both the constraint of privacy and the constraint of maintaining and advertising business so I think that's uh that's very uh that's very smart yes we already touched the that audiences uh um kind of change and that reporting change like how how exactly that looks like like can you give me like example like how to define the the audience for example like how did it how how was it before and like how is now with the Privacy sent book just I can kind of like picture it yeah for sure so today I mean Lo will be able to expand more uh in detail from the product perspective

but I mean today you're going after a specific user so you know that that user has completed xaction uh you know they've gotten to level seven but not level eight we can Target that specific user but we also know a lot of other information about them right how they're in and out of the app what other apps are in and out of all of all of that uh all of those signals that we take in in the new uh framework with with privacy sandbox we really just have those rules in place so we know that this is a user who got to level seven but not level eight and we can go after that that pool of users uh at the audience level okay so like what I don't see the change except like you can't see the additional data points is that the the the main difference yeah you have a you have fewer uh data points for conversion you have fewer postbacks you only have maximum three post bags for post click

two post backs for post view so it's this kind of you have this kind of limits you know like limited data points on on conversions and and also limited time windows so um for reporting the maximum window is uh is day 30 okay um so that's uh that's this kind of constraint that you have to accommodate um for audience for audience uh definition and targeting it's a it's even more uh it's it's even more another word because before again you would you would collect all the data all the events from a from from from an app with a device ID Associated so you get the whole history of actions per user and then you basically have your own data processing infrastructure to make something uh useful out of it m uh but now it's it's it's it's the other way around like you're going to push your tting rules to the to the device so

you're going to push to the device okay just send me request for users who've installed uh in the last months but who have been inactive in the last seven days and then you just expect that it works because you will receive a request you will receive a request identified with the the audience name corresponding to to those rules um but you will not know who's actually behind uh those requests you just expect that it matches the rules that you've said okay okay okay okay now I get it so yeah you need to think about the the rules before uh and uh now you can actually just yeah take all the data points and see ah well this looks good this doesn't look good then you will just figure something out based on the data points now it's okay the other way around that's kind of interesting okay all right um you mentioned the the limited data for uh for the reporting and basically I guess um um everything in terms of the

data how change like how does the uh the conversion window looks like for different post bags is it just let's say in first day you can get one post bag similar to scan for and then you have different time windows for each postbag or how does that work yeah it's it's really similar to to SK Network um here the the specs are are still changing uh but I think right now it's basically you get a first post back at day two uh after the The Click or the conversion um and then you get another one where it can customize the time window but it's maximum one months and then you get a final one after one months those are the current specs but but it's it's evolving and that's typically also the the kind of of of things that where where attech providers and also mmps mmps are of course also in the the picture they're providing feedback

because they they are today like the also the experts of this of this kind of settings and um and they yeah they have okay their their own reason I assume uh there's also some going to be some limitations on the um the creative performance right or like how does that look like yes well so personalization at the user level of a creative content is not doable anymore as we said because you do not know exactly who is who is sending another request so you you you're still able to to customize the creatives for audience let's say I have a different creative for my UA and for my retargeting that's that's really basic even within retargeting depending on the on the audience you want to to retarget you can have different uh creatives however um I would say like a really hyper targeted use case like show me a creative with the last shoes that I've seen on the on the website or on the on

the on the app just before this is not possible anymore because you do not know that's the same person yeah you can't identify the person okay so so what are you going to do on the creative level yeah I mean we are lucky in that we have have internal teams who have been focusing on building creatives based on the audience level for a long time so we don't we kind of have married the machine learning and the models deciding what creative to show to what user at what moment with this human aspect has always been kind of part of our our business is looking at how the creatives perform like trying to int it based on the data what ads we should be showing to which group of user so you know for example if we have a payer a simple example like a payer audience who is many levels into an app we we would show them different ads than we would show to a user who's installed in the last seven days that sort of thing will

still be able to do because it's really creative at the audience level and not at the user level uh but it'll be an interesting challenge to kind of uh go into this next step next phase yeah I can't I can't wait I mean I'm always I was always positive about the ATT uh and about the iOS changes so I think like this is just inevitable and will happen at some point in the future any any like at least like information about like I know you mentioned it's nobody it might be just in few years but anything more concrete that that you can you can share so there's um there's an agenda on Chrome uh where you know there's a um there's the official replication of third party cookies that has been announced I think for for mid next year something like that if it doesn't get delayed for Android nothing specific yet about the the device advertising ID

however we should probably expect it to be not earlier than than Chrome first but also not very not not very further away either so I would say know late 2024 maybe 2025 this kind of a plenty of time then plenty of time yeah that's that's a bit the risk that's a bit the risk because as I said it's it's really a complex Tech stuff at least for for third party vendors that are in the in the middle of all this and who are expected to bring performance to advertisers so so it's actually important to get prepared as soon as possible so so who do you think it's going to be more uh like suitable or have more Advantage from the um I guess data point date team Point uh for this privacy send book to actually you know Excel like with the iOS because I think like right now smaller companies

they're more agile and and more flexible can do things or like change things on the on the product side while the big bigger companies they're really slow and kind of can't make so many changes anyway like I I guess yeah any any idea like who can actually benefit um I think so first of all both uh type of companies will have to bear the the challenges of of reporting that's that's one thing I would say that maybe the the the big studios will be uh will have some some Advantage here because uh they will have spent most of their uh most of the past years working on the skad network and you know figuring this out uh and I think most of the knowledge on network can be reused here that's uh that's maybe one one thing however um small Studios can also maybe benefit

from the the overall anonymity of Android users that that's will have to maybe have also a better retention on their on their most valuable users I think you know today with the device IDs shared across the board it's it's easier for for competitors to to Target your your very your valuable users and and it's going to be harder definitely in the future so maybe that could be a an advantage to to small st yeah so so the like the main main question is then how is it going to influence both like UI world and the retargeting world I know you mentioned already some some of the some of the aspects but anything else that that comes into your mind for me the the main uh the main uh impact would be on performance uh as I said I really want to stress this out like unlike on iOS

retargeting will still be possible on on all and users so that's really that's really great um and and so overall the use cases will remain but the performance measurement and optimizations will be more constrained so to me it's likely that roas will decrease across the board a little as we've seen on on iOS that's that's for sure um then uh it's hard to uh it's hard to ipate like the the technical changes that it will bring to to to game developers at the stage because I think the industry is currently working hard to make it as simple as possible to use both Google but also us the M the mmps everybody is trying to to get the complexity abstracted so that it's easy to use um but um but but yeah I think ad Revenue will probably be disrupted significantly as we've seen on OS you you will see um you will see maybe also

big studios having an advantage here because maybe they they will have more resources to try to uh to to add signals to the other request to get better cpms things like that um but uh that's very interesting point yeah I wanted to ask one question then I forgot about it but now I know what I wanted to ask so uh was there um in or any any gaming companies were um in discussions with with Google as well what was someone there from the gaming side of things because why I'm asking this is just if they like games would need to make some changes on the product side just to get more data points just to get Advantage from the Privacy send books is there a discussion like that so actually uh gaming Partners can who are clients of adic can work with us and Google Google hasn't shared their specific list of all the vors in the

space that they're working with um you know we know MMP is ssps but I would actually encourage uh as as many vendors and studios are are if you're working with Google tell tell the rest of the community and let's all start you know sharing sharing learnings I think no need for us to be secretive about that adct is working working with Google we're happy to share insights as we kind of navigate this very technical challenge that that has been describing and I don't know let's let's work on this all together as an industry oh yes of course I mean uh that's uh that's the beauty part of the the gaming industry is like people actually share sh that's great because it's kind of helpful uh and I always encourage people to actually share as much as they can uh and that's that's what I've been doing since the the at happened I don't like to to speak about things before they happen and before I I have some experience with uh with anything so

that's why I'm very eager to jump on the scan 4.0 train uh as early as I can but also like there is still not that many U channels kind of ready anyway so so I guess it will take some time right so any any last advice uh obviously except the the sharing and talking to other people because that's important uh anything that uh comes into my mean into your minds well on my end uh I think you know something you said like resonates to me the the fact that you don't want to to to get to Deep dive too early uh because things things are are still changing a lot um however I think one of the most um uh Advanced uh part of the private SBX is definitely the reporting framework so I think here my advice would

be uh if you have figured out how to make it work with the scat Network then don't worry it should be pretty pretty similar uh so this knowledge will be uh reused for Android reporting on post duplication of the advertising ID um so so that's that's maybe my main advice make sure you figured out how to to make it work with the scan for and and I think it should be the transition for Android should be a for sure and and it would add to that my advice would be similar to when ATT roll rolled out I think it was important to have as much uh learnings and Baseline before that change as possible so I'm encouraging our partners to really work work with in the retargeting space like work with your partner to make sure that you know what are your best performing audiences what are your best performing creatives while still have the user level models to rely on uh

so you can kind of carry those uh contextual learnings into the next phase nice okay yeah okay I think so from what I understood uh from our discussion it's still nobody knows when it's going to happen May there is a maybe in maybe 20 24 2025 I guess definitely after Chrome then uh Google cares talk they talk to to you guys talk to the games that you work with they actually listen which is nice which is kind of nice very different story from Apple um we well we don't need to get into the weeds right now but definitely if there is some partner you work with and they are already testing the Privacy sandbox and you are well you have kind of well I would say a big data team because like you said it's really complex so definitely get get on and and try testing it out and

then yeah I think uh yeah we're we're good should be yeah it should be fun are you looking forward to it for sure yeah definitely course yeah no but I think it's a it's the way as we said earlier it's the it's the way you know the the market goes uh more more privacy less uh um less shadowing I mean the shadow usage of a personal personally identifiable data so so I'm you know really excited that uh that Google takes it seriously and doesn't yeah yeah I have to say sets up the environment for for for advert performance advertising to to to work still in this in this context yeah I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised uh that they didn't do the the apple way just hey it's happening now go figure it

out and and it really is elegant right it allows for privacy while with targeting like that should be the goal I think most people like a really good targeted ad if it's a exactly I love it when I get an ad and and it's for like a a new purse that I would be really excited about right uh I think people want want that so yeah I think so like that's how it should be uh I don't like to see like irrelevant ads like across my Facebook or my any well any basically inventory but uh yeah I'm a iPhone user so I need to get used to it yeah okay so um if anyone wants to reach out to you guys uh uh what should they what should they do please share share your details us an email Kate addic or ledic.com and we're happy to chat nice perfect then uh thank you very much for

coming and also thank you thank you very much I can't even speak anymore what's what's happening exactly I know right I know right time to bed thank you listeners uh and private SB is a is really a brainwashing topic so don't worry M okay okay all good all right thank you very much for listening for coming see you next time thanks for the invitation by F bye [Music]