Advertising targeting: Google abandons FLoC, replacing cookies, in favor of Topics API


Future successor to advertising cookies, Google’s FLoC has already been abandoned. It is replaced by another targeting method, Topics API, based on the main centers of interest of Internet users.

Like other web browsers before it, Chrome wants to stop supporting cookies. Problem, it is an essential brick of tracking and advertising targeting of Internet users, which happens to be one of the most profitable activities of Google. So the Californian giant invented FLoC, for Federated Learning of Cohorts. The idea? No longer target a particular individual by directly using their browsing data (which is less and less accepted and acceptable), but create cohorts of Internet users with similar behaviors and interests, anonymized, in order to present them with tailored advertisements without loss of performance for advertisers.

Problem, the FLoC quickly flopped. Most of the other market players who had considered supporting it withdrew, such as Microsoft or Mozilla, and Google finally decided to postpone Chrome’s cookie blocking until mid-2023, a year later than the date initially expected. At the same time, despite the excellent forecast figures displayed by Google regarding FLoC, the advertising market has shown some hesitation, if not reluctance, at the idea of ​​this momentous change. So the Mountain View firm got back to work and today we learn that the FLoC has been abandoned in favor of another targeted advertising system called Topics API.

A more transparent and optional approach

Its operation will be based on the identification of the five main centers of interest of Internet users by analyzing their activity on the Web over a rolling week. The data in question will only be stored locally for three weeks. “No external servers are involved, not even those of Google”, promises the company. For now, some 350 “topics” have been identified by Google, ranging from hiking to tennis, through caps or alternative rock. Eventually, this classification of Internet users according to their centers of interest could work on several thousand criteria. On the other hand, no sensitive category will ever be exploited, promises Google. The group refers here to the criteria of gender, race, sexuality, or even religion.

Perhaps most importantly, Google intends to assume full transparency in the operation of the tool and allow users to view and edit their categorizations, or even disable Topics API altogether if they wish. Reassuring points for advocates of privacy and confidentiality on the Internet. Indeed, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which had been very vocal about FLoC and its propensity to push fingerprinting, rather optimistically welcomes this new approach with Topics.

The first tests have started on Chrome and Google says it wants to provide more details quickly on these new proposals. In particular, it will be a question of reassuring advertisers about the targeting and transformation performance of this new method.



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