Intent to Ship: Protected Audience: Allow trusted bidding signals to trigger interest group updates

Paul Jensen

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May 31, 2024, 10:41:05 AMMay 31

to blink-dev

Summary

The Protected Audience API allows bidders to store information, called an interest group, from a single site in the browser that can only be read later in the context of an auction. Today, interest groups can be updated by fetching new values from a server. For all interest groups, the frequency of these updates is rate limited to at most once a day to conserve network traffic and avoid overwhelming servers. However, we've heard from developers that certain ad campaigns need much more timely updates. During Protected Audience auctions, the browser fetches real-time signals from bidders' key-value servers. This proposal allows the response to these fetches to indicate a subset of interest groups they’d like updated more frequently than once a day.

Blink component

Blink>InterestGroups

TAG review

For Protected Audience: https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/723

TAG review status

Completed for Protected Audience, resolved unsatisfied.

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

Feature represents optional new behavior that shouldn’t break existing usage.

Gecko & WebKit: No signal on parent proposal, Protected Audience. Asked in the Mozilla forum here, and in the Webkit forum here.

Edge: Edge has announced plans to support the Ad Selection API which shares much of its API surface with Protected Audience.

Web developers:

Feature requested by Microsoft in GitHub issue.

Debuggability

Protected Audience trusted bidding signals show up in the DevTools Network pane. Updates show up in the Application -> Storage -> Interest Groups DevTools pane.

Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, and Android WebView)?

It will be supported on all platforms that support Protected Audience, so all but WebView.

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?

Yes.

Flag name on chrome://flags

None

Finch feature name

InterestGroupUpdateIfOlderThan

Requires code in //chrome?

False

Estimated milestones

Shipping on desktop and Android in M125.

Anticipated spec changes

None

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5162656775536640

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.

Mike Taylor

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Jun 3, 2024, 10:16:06 PMJun 3

to Paul Jensen, blink-dev

On 5/31/24 11:40 PM, Paul Jensen wrote:

Contact emails

paulj...@chromium.org

Explainer

https://github.com/WICG/turtledove/pull/1095

Specification

https://github.com/WICG/turtledove/pull/1124

Summary

The Protected Audience API allows bidders to store information, called an interest group, from a single site in the browser that can only be read later in the context of an auction. Today, interest groups can be updated by fetching new values from a server. For all interest groups, the frequency of these updates is rate limited to at most once a day to conserve network traffic and avoid overwhelming servers. However, we've heard from developers that certain ad campaigns need much more timely updates. During Protected Audience auctions, the browser fetches real-time signals from bidders' key-value servers. This proposal allows the response to these fetches to indicate a subset of interest groups they’d like updated more frequently than once a day.

Blink component

Blink>InterestGroups

TAG review

For Protected Audience: https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/723

TAG review status

Completed for Protected Audience, resolved unsatisfied.

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

Feature represents optional new behavior that shouldn’t break existing usage.

Gecko & WebKit: No signal on parent proposal, Protected Audience. Asked in the Mozilla forum here, and in the Webkit forum here.

Edge: Edge has announced plans to support the Ad Selection API which shares much of its API surface with Protected Audience.

Web developers:

Feature requested by Microsoft in GitHub issue.

I don't see any feedback from Microsoft on this design in the issue (just from Criteo, which seems inconclusive). Have they given feedback elsewhere?

Debuggability

Protected Audience trusted bidding signals show up in the DevTools Network pane. Updates show up in the Application -> Storage -> Interest Groups DevTools pane.

Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, and Android WebView)?

It will be supported on all platforms that support Protected Audience, so all but WebView.

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?

Yes.

Flag name on chrome://flags

None

Finch feature name

InterestGroupUpdateIfOlderThan

Requires code in //chrome?

False

Estimated milestones

Shipping on desktop and Android in M125.

Anticipated spec changes

None

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5162656775536640

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.

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Caleb Raitto

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Jun 4, 2024, 1:53:31 PMJun 4

to blink-dev, Mike Taylor, blink-dev, Paul Jensen

Response inline

On Monday, June 3, 2024 at 10:16:06 PM UTC-4 Mike Taylor wrote:

On 5/31/24 11:40 PM, Paul Jensen wrote:

Contact emails
paulj...@chromium.org

Explainer
https://github.com/WICG/turtledove/pull/1095

Specification
https://github.com/WICG/turtledove/pull/1124

Summary
The Protected Audience API allows bidders to store information, called an interest group, from a single site in the browser that can only be read later in the context of an auction. Today, interest groups can be updated by fetching new values from a server. For all interest groups, the frequency of these updates is rate limited to at most once a day to conserve network traffic and avoid overwhelming servers. However, we've heard from developers that certain ad campaigns need much more timely updates. During Protected Audience auctions, the browser fetches real-time signals from bidders' key-value servers. This proposal allows the response to these fetches to indicate a subset of interest groups they’d like updated more frequently than once a day.

Blink component
Blink>InterestGroups

TAG review
For Protected Audience: https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/723

TAG review status
Completed for Protected Audience, resolved unsatisfied.

Risks Interoperability and Compatibility
Feature represents optional new behavior that shouldn’t break existing usage.

Gecko & WebKit: No signal on parent proposal, Protected Audience. Asked in the Mozilla forum here, and in the Webkit forum here.

Edge: Edge has announced plans to support the Ad Selection API which shares much of its API surface with Protected Audience.

Web developers:

Feature requested by Microsoft in GitHub issue.

I don't see any feedback from Microsoft on this design in the issue (just from Criteo, which seems inconclusive). Have they given feedback elsewhere?

The response from Microsoft (ads) is here: https://github.com/WICG/turtledove/issues/729#issuecomment-1822190741 -- it's the opening paragraph that starts with "I do think having a 'please refresh when this auction is over' lever is a clear improvement over the current situation from a functionality perspective".

Debuggability
Protected Audience trusted bidding signals show up in the DevTools Network pane. Updates show up in the Application -> Storage -> Interest Groups DevTools pane.

Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, and Android WebView)?
It will be supported on all platforms that support Protected Audience, so all but WebView.

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?
Yes.

Flag name on chrome://flags
None

Finch feature name
InterestGroupUpdateIfOlderThan

Requires code in //chrome?
False

Estimated milestones
Shipping on desktop and Android in M125.

Anticipated spec changes
None

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status
https://chromestatus.com/feature/5162656775536640

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.

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Mike Taylor

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Jun 10, 2024, 2:41:20 PMJun 10

to Caleb Raitto, blink-dev, Paul Jensen

OK - thanks. I was hoping they might have responded elsewhere to your request for feedback from April or May, but I don't see a reason to block on that.

LGTM1

Yoav Weiss (@Shopify)

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Jun 10, 2024, 11:47:20 PMJun 10

to Mike Taylor, Caleb Raitto, blink-dev, Paul Jensen

LGTM2

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Vladimir Levin

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Jun 11, 2024, 11:46:09 AMJun 11

to Yoav Weiss (@Shopify), Mike Taylor, Caleb Raitto, blink-dev, Paul Jensen

I think this is an improvement to the platform. My only small (bikeshed) concern is the name of the variable: updateIfOlderThanMs. Instead of a day, it seems that we're going down to millisecond level. The spec also says

> An `updateIfOlderThanMs` that's less than 10 minutes will be clamped to 10 minutes.

Was milliseconds chosen as consistency with time units in the platform or something else?

Thanks,

Vlad

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAOmohSKfDFuATTcuoEJ%3DDKz%3DFrR4nnBTb%3DTPOpkvMOD-HB-UkQ%40mail.gmail.com.

Caleb Raitto

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Jun 11, 2024, 12:28:29 PMJun 11

to blink-dev, Vladimir Levin, Mike Taylor, Caleb Raitto, blink-dev, Paul Jensen, Yoav Weiss

Yes, milliseconds was chosen for consistency with time units in the web platform, per guidance in [0].

-Caleb

[0] https://w3ctag.github.io/design-principles/#milliseconds

LGTM2

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/a64b7e39-ef35-4b72-b064-d13c3fb8c821%40chromium.org.

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Vladimir Levin

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Jun 11, 2024, 1:06:23 PMJun 11

to Caleb Raitto, blink-dev, Mike Taylor, Paul Jensen, Yoav Weiss

LGTM3

Thanks!

LGTM2

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