Gulf users stand outside Google and Apple’s privacy wars

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Google has abandoned its project to remove third-party cookies from its Chrome web browser.

However if the search giant follows through with plans to give users the chance to switch off tracking technology, online publishers and the advertisers who use them may struggle to reach the audiences they want.

The challenge highlights an ongoing struggle between advertising and privacy concerns online. 

While online advertising spend is likely to rise, the advertising industry will look for the most efficient ways to put the most effective ads in front of individual internet users.

This is likely to give another boost to social and influencer marketing, in which advertisers engage with their customers more conversationally. 

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But perhaps it is time for some definitions of the terms at the heart of the debate.

Cookies are small pieces of code that are put on to your computer by websites and advertisers. They allow tracking. 

Advertisers and ad technology companies track internet users as they visit sites across the web. This allows advertisers to deliver targeted ads (showing sports shoe ads to a running enthusiast, for example). They do this based on browsing history. They can retarget ads to remind users of products they previously looked at, and can attribute user behaviours (site visits, purchases and so on) to specific ads. 

First-party cookies work only within a site. They are more essential and less controversial. They allow websites to do things like update your shopping cart. 

Third-party cookies track users across sites. They have become controversial because people dislike their personal data being tracked and traded across the internet.  

In a survey conducted in the UAE last year by Statista, 30 percent of respondents agreed that they were concerned that their data is “being misused on the internet”. 

Fingerprinting is what people are scared of. Google’s own definition says fingerprinting “encompasses techniques to identify and track the behaviour of individual users. Fingerprinting uses mechanisms that users aren’t aware of and can’t control.” 

Another fear of privacy advocates is advertisers using fingerprinting and other ad tech to prey on consumers’ vulnerabilities with targeted advertising. For example, if a web user has been researching gambling addiction, they might be targeted with a casino ad.

Google’s new approach

Chrome is Google’s web browser, the most popular in the world (with 65.7 percent market share according to StatCounter) and in the Gulf region (78.5 percent in the UAE and 68.9 percent in Saudi Arabia).  

In 2020, Google announced that Chrome would phase out third-party cookies. But it has repeatedly pushed this date back.  

Last month it announced: “We are proposing an updated approach that elevates user choice… Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing.” 

“Deprecation” is Google’s euphemism for the project to phase out third-party-cookie support in its Chrome web browser. The search giant has been working on this for four years. July’s announcement has left the industry reeling.  

Although details are still unclear, it seems that Chrome will offer users the choice to switch cookies off or on. Although they will be asked this through a one-time prompt, they will be free to change their choice at any time. 

Privacy Sandbox is Google’s project to develop ways to serve personalised ads without using cookies. It has been running in parallel with cookie deprecation. 

It now seems that Google and others will continue to try to find alternative ways to serve the most effective ads to the right audience online, but will carry on using cookies as well. 

Apple has assumed the role of anti-Google in the cookie debate. The maker of iPhones and MacBooks switched off support for third-party cookies in its Safari browser back in 2017. It is the world’s second most popular browser, with 18 percent global market share, 12 percent in the UAE and 24 percent in Saudi Arabia. 

In an ad launched just before Google’s announcement, Apple shows flocks of sinister, bird-like CCTV cameras spying on people’s phones until they switch to Safari. Apple implies that Privacy Sandbox will not prevent digital fingerprinting. 

Three years ago Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency on its mobile devices, applying it to all apps and not just Safari. The system asks up front and before an app follows a user to other apps or sites whether it would be OK for it to keep a record of what the user is doing elsewhere. 

Perhaps GCC web users aren’t too bothered about being tracked, though. The UAE has the highest opt-in rates of any country for App Tracking Transparency, at 50 percent, according to data from Business of Apps and Adjust. After Brazil and Vietnam, Saudi Arabia is in fourth place, at 42 percent.  

The muted reaction to Apple’s attempts to limit tracking suggests that the Chrome announcement may give regional advertisers more freedom to target ads, without upsetting GCC consumers as much as more concerned web users elsewhere in the world.

Austyn Allison is an editorial consultant and journalist who has covered Middle East advertising since 2007