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WTF is the Attribution Reporting API in Google’s Privacy Sandbox?
This article is part of a special Digiday editorial series to catch you up on the basics of Google’s phaseout of third-party cookies. More from the series →
The third-party cookie going away won’t only affect advertisers’ abilities to target ads but also their means of knowing which of those ads led to product sales or conversion events.
To help fill that cookie-sized hole in the digital ad industry’s measurement system, Google has developed the Attribution Reporting API as part of its Privacy Sandbox set of proposed third-party cookie replacements.
The Attribution Reporting API effectively has the browser play the part of the third-party cookie. But in order to protect people’s privacy, it restricts advertisers’ and publishers’ abilities to connect ad exposure and conversion data while introducing noise and delays.
“There’s some pluses with that. But there’s also some minuses that come with the Attribution Reporting API,” said Joe Doran, chief product officer at Epsilon.
Digiday spoke with Doran as well as Quantcast’s Durban Frazer and Sharethrough’s Curt Larson to break down the pluses, minuses and mechanics of the Attribution Reporting API in this explainer video.
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