Google: No tracking, no personalized advertising?

No cookie-based user tracking

Google has been saying for some time that it plans to phase out third-party cookies in its own browser, Google Chrome. So it comes as no surprise that it has now announced that it will stop tracking individual users across multiple websites.

What sounds good for users and their privacy has long been a cause for concern among advertisers, as it is precisely this data that is used to display personalized advertising to potential customers.

Will there now be no more advertising on Google?

Advertisements account for about two-thirds of Google's revenue and are therefore its main source of income.

Therefore, it will still be possible to place ads within your own network. It stands to reason that the ads will no longer target users as precisely as they have done up to now. For this reason, marketers and advertisers fear for their leads and conversions – but according to the Google Blog, they are wrong to do so.

The new tool of choice is called “Federated Learning of Cohorts” (FLoC) and is used to group multiple users into clusters or cohorts in order to serve targeted ads to this “community of interest” based on their areas of interest. With this method, individuals disappear into a group with similar interests and can still be targeted. According to tests of the FLoC technology conducted so far, “at least 95% of conversions” can be expected.

What happens next?

The first test runs are scheduled to begin in the second quarter of this year. We are and remain excited to see how this technology develops, proves itself, and to what extent it affects the tech giant's market position. Will it be strengthened, weakened, or even expanded? The future will tell, and we will stay tuned.