NextRoll, in partnership with Audigent, a part of Experian, recently used Google's Protected Audience API (PAAPI) advertising tool to generate nearly 5 million impressions in a privacy-safe way. As third-party cookies disappear, this new use case shows that large scale reach is still possible.

• Over two weeks, leveraging first-party data from Audigent, NextRoll targeted an interest group—made up of users with a common interest—across Google's Privacy Sandbox inventory, gathering millions of impressions on 42,000 domains.

Historically, PAAPI, which is a part of the Privacy Sandbox, has enabled advertisers to retarget users who previously interacted with a brand or service. But by integrating first-party data from platforms like Audigent, advertisers can broaden their reach while still serving privacy-safe, contextually relevant ads.

• 43% of US advertising professionals say recent privacy laws are accelerating their plans to reduce reliance on cookies, according to a July 2024 survey from Proximic by Comscore Inc.
• 62% of brand marketers worldwide believe first-party data will become more important over the next two years, while 26% believe the importance of third-party cookies will decline, per October 2024 data from Econsultancy.

Behind the scenes: The primary goal of the NextRoll/Audigent partnership was to develop a scalable, privacy-focused method to engage audiences and support advertisers exploring PAAPI, said Will Nixon, head of data partnerships at NextRoll.

• “We wanted to find a way to test and refine the use of the PAAPI specs to support advertisers in adopting this type of upper-funnel targeting using third-party data that they’re used to using,” said Nixon.
• In addition, NextRoll saw this as another opportunity to provide feedback to industry participants and Google to enhance the Privacy Sandbox APIs.
• “The more testing we do, the better we can provide feedback and build a suitable solution,” said Nixon.

The next phase: With its initial test completed, NextRoll will begin stress-testing real-world targeting scenarios, said Nixon.

• “We want to test the limits of how many interest groups can we create together and how many or few browsers can be added to those while being able to see them across the inventory currently available for Privacy Sandbox,” he said.

Full-speed ahead: Although Google has backtracked on deprecating third-party cookies, NextRoll remains committed to testing and improving the Privacy Sandbox, said Nixon.

“We’re still dedicated to finding ways to support a free, open, ad-supported internet, but in a way that's more privacy friendly,” he said.

Privacy-safe tools like the Privacy Sandbox will become even more important for advertisers if Google’s user-choice rollout mirrors Apple’s AppTracking Transparency, Nixon noted.

• A lot depends on how Google crafts the opt-out language, but the move will still limit advertisers’ access to third-party cookies.
• “Maybe it’ll impact 50% [of advertisers’ access], maybe it’ll reduce it by 75%. Or maybe it will be less. But we still see a world where the scale of third-party cookies decreases considerably across Chrome.”

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