Google debuts ‘confidential matching,’ a move to quell advertisers’ concerns around data leakage

According to Google, the new offering uses “Trusted Execution Environments” (TEE) to help advertisers use its suite of marketing tools for their online campaigns to ensure that their first-party data, such as CRM lists or customer loyalty data, is less prone to data leakage.

Per the sales pitch, the introduction of confidential matching should give media teams using Google’s campaign optimization tools, such as Customer Match or Enhanced Conversions, more data security assurances.

Platform providers often assure marketers that it’s safe to upload their highly prized first-party data directly to use such services, but seasoned practitioners are aware that data leakage is a real issue to contend with. As the policing of consumer information is increasingly tightly regulated, it’s a growing concern among marketers.

According to Kamal Janardhan, Google’s senior director of product management and measurement, the latest development uses TEE to provide added data security and transparency — a service it first teased at Google Marketing Live earlier this year.

“By isolating your business information during processing so that no one — including Google — can access the data being processed,” she wrote in a blog post, adding that such technologies are now switched on by default on its platform.

Furthermore, Google’s team hopes to convince marketers of its platform’s privacy credentials through “attestation” — a means of assuring partners that data on its platform is processed in line with regulations via third-party audits.

“Also, we’re sharing our TEE architecture along with a few open source examples to help others build confidential solutions,” wrote Janardhan. “We’re continuing to work alongside others in the ads industry to further adoption of and build standards for this privacy enhancing technology.”

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In the build-up to the launch, Google has been briefing campaign teams at media agencies and platform resellers. Some of those present told Digiday that “confidential matching” would likely elicit more ad spend from marketers operating within tightly regulated industries, such as the finance or pharmaceutical sectors.

Additionally, those present thought the newly launched data encryption features could assure advertisers that the platform wouldn’t absorb a brand’s first-party data in a manner that could later benefit others, including direct rivals.

Jeremy Hull, BrainLabs’ chief product officer, told Digiday the attestation assurances meant Google would now be able to prove its privacy credentials, whereas his company and its clients previously had to take it at its word. “Advertisers can verify their data is not used by Google in ways they have not specifically approved,” he added.

The term “trusted execution environments” may sound familiar to Google watchers. That’s because TEE is one of the core tenets of its Privacy Sandbox proposals to explore targeted advertising methods without the use of third-party cookies, with advocates claiming it can enable the execution of complex algorithms for ad targeting and performance measurement without compromising user privacy.