The goalposts have been arranged – or rearranged – again with FLoC, Google’s new ad tracking technology, dubbed the ‘cookie apocalypse’.
Following last month’s revised target, a new timeline has gone live on the company’s blog, suggesting that full implementation of the multi-stage plan to implement the ‘federated learning of cohorts’ tool for Chrome may run into 2023, instead of the third-quarter 2022 previously mentioned.
A chart provides a timeline for elements of the changeover.
It hopes to have finished with conventional cookies by then, with AndroidPolice reporting the move to aggregated tracking that allows advertisers to track groups of anonymised people instead.
The chart is part of an expanding Privacy Sandbox which specifies which parts of the plan are “still in discussion”, which are being tested, and times for implementation – with FLoC set for fuller testing 2021 through to mid 2022.
Google’s plans sent a shockwave through the media industry, with many publishers putting their own first-party data plans into overdrive.