Discover how the Android Privacy Sandbox will transform mobile marketing with insights from Remerge’s Luckey Harpley.
As Google’s Android Privacy Sandbox gears up for its anticipated 2025 launch, mobile marketers need to stay ahead of the curve. Remerge, a leading Demand Side Platform (DSP), is at the forefront of this transition, collaborating with Google and other ad tech partners, such as Verve, AppsFlyer, Adjust, and Singular, to ensure a seamless shift. Luckey Harpley, Staff Product Manager at Remerge, sheds light on what this means for the future of mobile marketing and how to navigate this new landscape.
Why Is Mobile Marketing Shifting to Privacy-First Advertising?
The rise of AI and sophisticated machine learning algorithms showcases the benefits of new technologies, but it also highlights the dangers of these advancements. People want more control over how big tech businesses manage their data. The advertising world is moving towards a privacy-centric future and marketers must adapt.
Apple made the first privacy move on mobile with the launch of its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework in 2021. Google’s answer is the Privacy Sandbox, a set of APIs to facilitate the selling, buying, and targeting of in-app ad placements, without requiring third-party cookies in Chrome or cross-app identifiers on Android. For Android, this will provide tracking and reporting via its Attribution API, targeting through Topics and Protected Audiences APIs, and data collection and handling via the SDK Run Time.
Why are DSPs Like Remerge Already Working on Solutions for the Android Privacy Sandbox?
It’s important to avoid a situation like the ATT rollout, where advertisers and publishers were left in the dark before its launch and struggled to understand how to run campaigns after it came into effect.
We want to ensure everything is ready for mobile marketers to run privacy-compliant advertising campaigns on Android without experiencing a drastic decline in performance. Android maintained its position as the leading mobile operating system worldwide in the first quarter of 2024, with a market share of 70.7% so this transitional period is crucial for the well-being of the mobile marketing ecosystem.
Does Google’s Decision to Keep Third-Party Cookies on Chrome Change Anything?
Google recently announced that they no longer plan to deprecate third-party cookies on Chrome and emphasized giving users the choice to opt-in to tracking. This update is unrelated to mobile. A similar approach is likely to happen on Android, where the GAID remains intact, and users can choose whether to share this with advertisers. In this scenario, nothing would change for mobile DSPs and their investment into Google’s APIs – the Android Privacy Sandbox would remain an essential framework for privacy-preserving advertising campaigns.
What Has Remerge Tested and Why Should Mobile Marketers Take Notice?
Remerge’s Research and Development team has been working on the Sandbox for over 1.5 years. They’ve focused on testing the Protected Audience API, which will allow advertisers to run retargeting campaigns on Android.
Tests have been completed with Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs) like Adjust, AppsFlyer, and Singular. This includes developing a proof-of-concept for Custom Audience Delegation, a mechanism required for remarketing in Sandbox. This allows an MMP SDK to add users to custom audiences on behalf of advertisers based on their in-app behavior. Additionally, the first DSP/SSP on-device bidding test was conducted with Verve. These are small steps but important milestones for Sandbox testing, demonstrating that the Protected Audience API and custom audiences mechanisms are working as planned and validating product capabilities.
How Will a Mobile Marketing Manager’s Life Change When the Sandbox Rolls Out?
Advertisers won’t experience a considerable change in the buying process. At Remerge, marketers will continue to share their user data, desired campaign segmentation, and budget with the Account Management team as usual. Remerge will still be able to target users according to activity within an advertiser’s app and run creatives such as static and video. There’ll be no changes to CTR and CPX reporting, and for ROAS reporting, the data will likely have limited dimensionality, focusing on campaign and country-level reporting.
Google and its partners are doing the heavy lifting on the technical setup. Compared to ATT, the Android Privacy Sandbox is not only far more powerful with its targeting capabilities but also much more complex. This is a completely new tech stack with privacy-preserving mechanisms, and while we might see some performance dips initially, the long-term benefits are expected to be significant.
What About User Acquisition (UA) Campaigns?
While the focus has been on retargeting and the Protected Audience API, the Protected App Signals is supporting UA on Android. Although no industry players have made proposals on the Protected App Signals API yet, advertisers should reach out to their UA partners to discuss their plans.
What Can Mobile Marketers Do Right Now?
Advertisers should start finding a partner equipped to run mobile marketing campaigns on Android. Early adopters like Remerge, who have helped shape components of the Privacy Sandbox framework, will be well-positioned to hit the ground running when it launches.