‘It’s dead’: Publisher confessions on the future of Google’s Privacy Sandbox

Google has said publicly that for now, it will continue with Sandbox, but Digiday asked a range of publishers about their thoughts on its future, and the consensus was that without the incentive of Google deprecating third-party cookies, there isn’t much point. 

Reports from ad tech vendors like Criteo, which circulated over the last year, had already shown how savagely CPMs would be affected should Sandbox roll out, with a 60% CPM drop anticipated, alarming any publisher that saw them, and causing others to side-step away at speed. Several had already ditched running any kind of Sandbox testing six-plus months ago, when the performance results showed no signs of improving.

It’s important to note, too, that although some time and resources were spent on testing, the heavier costs of implementation have largely been shouldered by ad tech vendors, not publishers themselves.

We asked publishers to share their candid thoughts on whether they think Sandbox has a future or not, in exchange for anonymity (given they all have some kind of relationship with Google.) 

For some, it’s time to move on, for the Sandbox loyalists, the close collaborations they developed with Google and other partners testing alternatives over the last five years, will form a vital part of future relationships and innovation. 

Here are some extracts of interviews on the topic below, lightly edited for clarity and flow. 

An ad tech director at a major newspaper group on why Google was ‘hamstrung’

“I suspect the writing was on the wall once the Criteo report [last June] said it would be a 60% hit [on CPMs] for publishers. Like, really worrying numbers. I think that was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back… the protected audience API is on by default [in the browser], the attribution reporting API is on by default, Topics is off by default, because it’s a new type of functionality. But there’s not actually any incentive to build for those things because they’re crap. That’s not a very nice thing to say, because Google’s also been hamstrung, but that’s why it’s [Sandbox] dead. 

“It’s been hamstrung because it’s been torn between two mistresses: on one hand, you have privacy, and on the other, you have utility and competition. And Google’s been trying to circle that square for ages…and it all comes back to this tension — you make something more private, it becomes less addressable and less measurable, and that means the buyers adjust their valuations of things accordingly.”

Exec at a major publisher that went deep on live active tests with the Sandbox team 

“You can only test if a buyer wants to test, and because of the kind of delays and future announcements, the pace of testing had slowed. Buyers were like, we’re not focused on this right now…The Sandbox team built a lot of tech, and some of that tech probably is no longer going to be useful. Some of that tech is already in use today when there are cookies and people are finding value from it. So I think this kind of acknowledges a shift that was happening, which is: it was less the Privacy Sandbox team and more like an ad tech innovation team inside Google, inside Chrome. And if they actually commit to that, there are lots of problems in the current market that a team that’s full of capable, mission-driven people could solve…You can see a world where, in the next six to 12 months, the Chrome team builds awesome new tech on top of the bones of the stuff that they started.

“We don’t have to worry about a somewhat false narrative of: cookies must go. They [cookies] don’t need to. Then you can actually put all of this bandwidth and horsepower onto improving the current market, not worrying about a potential future problem that was in Google’s control all along.”

Director of innovation at a large news publisher on the limited targeting capabilities 

“We ditched Sandbox about six to eight months ago when we realised the targeting capabilities weren’t stronger than our own. It had very limited targeting capabilities and didn’t have the attribution performance models built into it, and actually the physical, logical thing of querying an audience or building a cohort in the Sandbox in the browser, probably, in reality, would have slowed the browser down. So it had the vision of what it wanted to be, but it physically wasn’t ready, and that’s why Google hasn’t rolled it out. Because if it had rolled out on that 1% [of Chrome users it rolled out Sandbox to, restricting third-party cookies in the browser, in early 2024] a year ago, and been successful, we would not be in this situation today. They [Google] may carry on developing it, but not pushing it. Long term, they won’t be supporting what Sandbox is today, it might be some version of Sandbox 2.0.”

Director, programmatic and revenue operations at a digital publisher on Sandbox innovation 

“I think it’s very exciting [what the future of Privacy Sandbox may be.] Honestly, I’ve always enjoyed the innovation that’s come out of Privacy Sandbox. I don’t think there’s been innovation in our space in a long time. I think header bidding was the last game-changing innovation. I’m a little bit disappointed that Google is choosing to roll this back. But I don’t think it’s a failure… I think there are macro circumstances that are impacting their ability to roll out the change that they want. It’s a little bitter for me, because on one side, we’re going to probably make more money this year. On the other side, I’m a genuine fan of the space, and I kind of wanted something interesting to happen.”

CRO at a digital publisher on the lack of demand from ad buyers

“We made the call a while ago to stop investing time in Privacy Sandbox. There wasn’t anywhere near the [level of] advertiser participation to give a real indication of what the yield from Privacy Sandbox-enabled transactions was going to be. 

“Bigger picture, it’s just such a shame. So many people, so many companies were only making their decisions based on where Google was with cookie deprecation. So any post-cookie type of technology that could have been developed, it had like half the amount of buy-in to even try to develop it that it could have because Google never did away with the cookie like Apple and  Firefox…  Advertisers had a choice at that moment to say, we really need to invest in cookieless technology, or we’ve got plenty of inventory in Chrome, let’s just keep buying it there. And then a lot of people hit the easy button instead of trying to come up with a different solution.”

CRO at lifestyle media publisher on the uncertainty of Chrome’s future ownership

“We didn’t invest heavily in the Privacy Sandbox, for example. We were open to helping ad tech companies that were testing it, to be a part of it to help them test. But we weren’t spending lots of dedicated resources or anything to test Privacy Sandbox. I think just as part of being a smaller company, we didn’t want to spend resources on that, when there were a lot of things that were unclear. And we weren’t getting asked on the buy side.

“If Google sells the Chrome browser and it’s a separate entity, what’s going to be their motivation to help with online advertising? If Chrome is its own entity or lives as part of some other company that doesn’t have the same legacy-like structure of advertising, there’s going to be less incentive there. So I think it’s like, why push so hard on a Privacy Sandbox within Chrome if you don’t know the future of Chrome?”