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FLoC is off the table as Google switches to targeting by Topics

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FLoC is off the table as Google switches to targeting by Topics

Google will replace Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) with a new interest-based targeting proposal called Topics, the company announced Tuesday.

The Topics API will share a limited number of topics of interest, based on the user’s recent browsing browsing history, with participating sites without involving external servers. Users will be able to review topics assigned to their profile and remove them. There are no plans at this stage to allow them to add topics. Google says it will have a process in place to exclude potentially sensitive topics like race and sexual orientation. The final iteration of the user controls, as well as other technical aspects of how Topics works, will be determined based on the trial and feedback, Google said.

We reported in the Daily Brief last August that this change was being contemplated.

Google had no news to announce with respect to its Privacy Sandbox Timeline for deprecating third-party cookies, although it conceded it might change depending on trials and feedback.

How it will work. “With Topics, your browser determines a handful of topics, like ‘Fitness’ or ‘Travel,’ that represent your top interests for that week based on your browsing history,” Google said in the announcement.

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Up to five topics are associated with the browser. Topics are stored for three weeks and the processing occurs on the device, without involving any external servers, including Google’s own servers.

Google is starting this initiative with about 300 topics “that represent an intersection of IAB’s Content Taxonomy V2 and also our own advertising taxonomy review,” said Ben Galbraith, Chrome product director, “This is a starting point; we could see this getting into the low thousands or staying in the hundreds [of topics].” 

When a user goes to a participating website, the Topics API selects three topics (one from each of the past three weeks) to share with that site and its advertising partners. If a site does not participate in the Topics API, “Then it doesn’t provide a topic nor does it receive a topic,” Galbraith said. The site itself or its advertising partners can opt in to the Topics API.

Google has also published a technical explainer containing more details about the Topics proposal.

The difference between FLoC and Topics. One of the main distinctions between Google’s previous targeting proposal, FLoC, and the Topics API is that Topics does not group users into cohorts. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation has pointed out, fingerprinting techniques could be used to distinguish a user’s browser from the thousands of other users within the same cohort to establish a unique identifier for that browser.

Additionally, under FLoC, the browser gathers data about a user’s browsing habits in order to assign that user to a cohort, with new cohorts assigned on a weekly basis, based on their previous week’s browsing data. The Topics API determines topics to associate with the user on a weekly basis according to their browsing history, but those topics are kept for three weeks. They are shared with participating sites and advertisers rather than a FLoC cohort ID.

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The difference between contextual advertising and Topics. Galbraith confirmed that, unlike traditional contextual advertising, users can be targeted by topic even on sites that have nothing to do with the topic. In other words, someone that had showed interest in camping equipment in the previous three weeks might be targeted with ads for tents on a sports website.

“Time will tell” which browsers will adopt. Google is in the early phases of implementing the Topics API, so other browsers likely won’t have had a chance to evaluate it. But, Chrome was the only browser to adopt its predecessor (FLoC), so it’s unlikely that Firefox, Safari, Edge or other browsers will adopt Google’s proposal this time either.

“We’re sharing the explainer, which is the beginning of that process to discuss with other browsers their view on the Topics API, so time will tell,” Galbraith said.

Why we care. Google is currently set to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome sometime next year and now we have a better idea of what audience targeting options will be available. Although FLoC is now officially off the table, the remarketing solution FLEDGE is still under consideration.

Prior to the Topics API, Google ran into a number of challenges with FLoC, including lack of adoption, industry pushback and regulatory issues. The company has likely addressed some of those challenges with this new proposal, but adoption among other browsers remains unlikely, which could impact how big of a user base advertisers are able to get in front of.

Galbraith declined to make explicit comment on the alternative identifiers being developed within the adtech industry, only saying that Google believes that the days of tracking consumers are over.

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Additional reporting by Kim Davis.


About The Author

1640838256 758 Inclusive marketing resources to strengthen your brands messaging

George Nguyen is an editor at Third Door Media, primarily covering organic and paid search, podcasting and e-commerce. His background is in journalism and content marketing. Prior to entering the industry, he worked as a radio personality, writer, podcast host and public school teacher.


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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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More promotions and more layoffs

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More promotions and more layoffs

For martech professionals salaries are good and promotions are coming faster, unfortunately, layoffs are coming faster, too. That’s according to the just-released 2024 Martech Salary and Career Survey. Another very unfortunate finding: The median salary of women below the C-suite level is 35% less than what men earn.

The last year saw many different economic trends, some at odds with each other. Although unemployment remained very low overall and the economy grew, some businesses — especially those in technology and media — cut both jobs and spending. Reasons cited for the cuts include during the early years of the pandemic, higher interest rates and corporate greed.

Dig deeper: How to overcome marketing budget cuts and hiring freezes

Be that as it may, for the employed it remains a good time to be a martech professional. Salaries remain lucrative compared to many other professions, with an overall median salary of $128,643. 

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Here are the median salaries by role:

  • Senior management $199,653
  • Director $157,776
  • Manager $99,510
  • Staff $89,126

Senior managers make more than twice what staff make. Directors and up had a $163,395 median salary compared to manager/staff roles, where the median was $94,818.

One-third of those surveyed said they were promoted in the last 12 months, a finding that was nearly equal among director+ (32%) and managers and staff (30%). 

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Extend the time frame to two years, and nearly three-quarters of director+ respondents say they received a promotion, while the same can be said for two-thirds of manager and staff respondents.

Dig deeper: Skills-based hiring for modern marketing teams

Employee turnover 

In 2023, we asked survey respondents if they noticed an increase in employee churn and whether they would classify that churn as a “moderate” or “significant” increase. For 2024, given the attention on cost reductions and layoffs, we asked if the churn they witnessed was “voluntary” (e.g., people leaving for another role) or “involuntary” (e.g., a layoff or dismissal). More than half of the marketing technology professionals said churn increased in the last year. Nearly one-third classified most of the churn as “involuntary.”

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Men and Women

Screenshot 2024 03 21 124540Screenshot 2024 03 21 124540

This year, instead of using average salary figures, we used the median figures to lessen the impact of outliers in the salary data. As a result, the gap between salaries for men and women is even more glaring than it was previously.

In last year’s report, men earned an average of 24% more than women. This year the median salary of men is 35% more than the median salary of women. That is until you get to the upper echelons. Women at director and up earned 5% more than men.

Methodology

The 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey is a joint project of MarTech.org and chiefmartec.com. We surveyed 305 marketers between December 2023 and February 2024; 297 of those provided salary information. Nearly 63% (191) of respondents live in North America; 16% (50) live in Western Europe. The conclusions in this report are limited to responses from those individuals only. Other regions were excluded due to the limited number of respondents. 

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Download your copy of the 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey here. No registration is required.

Get MarTech! Daily. Free. In your inbox.

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