Will The Privacy Sandbox Be Delayed Again?

Another week another Privacy Sandbox article, this time the UK CMA are being quoted as telling an audience at a recent IAB conference, that they have the power to stop Google’s Privacy Sandbox from rolling out, if they are not satisfied that Google are meeting the commitments they made around this initiative:

This is of course accurate & not really a revelation, the CMA has been overseeing the rollout of the Sandbox for years. What Chris Jenkins of the CMA said was “If we’re not satisfied we can resolve the concerns, [we can make changes] to effectively delay the implementation,” of third-party cookie deprecation “We do have powers to ensure Google addresses these concerns.

At Impact we believe that the Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) that Google are developing will be vital to providing information that is free at the point of access to billions of people globally so it is important to get things right. However it is perhaps also important to recognise that the Sandbox is an ongoing project and the PETs that Google launches will likely not be perfect at launch regardless of how many times they get delayed, so perfect should not be the enemy of perfect.

The question is how to do this? Currently 1% of Chrome browsers have had third party cookies (3PCs) removed, in order to ensure more robust testing, Impact Media and some other notable AdTech businesses like RTB House believe tests of the sandbox should be scaled to 10% of Chrome users. Whether or not the existing timelines of switching 3PCs off in 2024 could be achieved remains to be seen, but perhaps a delay of three months and a switch over in 2025 would be the best possible solution to maxmise the utility of the PETs Google has developed and minimise their impact.