WTF is the Private Aggregation API in Google’s Privacy Sandbox?

This article is a WTF explainer, in which we break down media and marketing’s most confusing terms. More from the series →

Google’s Privacy Sandbox may be a bit stuck in the mud. Not only has the company postponed its own third-party cookie deprecation plans — again — but the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority has identified a whole host of concerns with Privacy Sandbox’s post-cookie proposals.

However. One Privacy Sandbox proposal that does not seem to have earned the regulator’s ire is the Private Aggregation API. Paired with Privacy Sandbox’s Shared Storage proposal, the Private Aggregation API stands to provide a means for marketers to receive reports on the audiences served their ads across sites while withholding individual-level reporting, as broken down in the video below.

“The Private Aggregation API is really going to help us answer quite a few questions, one of the most important being reach and frequency,” said Michael Bauer, vp and group director of data & analysis at Digitas North America.

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