Intent to Deprecate and Remove: Protected Audience
Paul Jensen
Intent to Deprecate and Remove: Protected Audience
Contact emails
Explainer
https://github.com/WICG/turtledove/blob/main/FLEDGE.md
Specification
https://wicg.github.io/turtledove/
Summary
The Protected Audience API provides a method of interest-group advertising without third-party cookies or user tracking across sites.
Following Chrome's announcement that the current approach to third-party cookies will be maintained, we are now planning to deprecate and remove the Protected Audience API (along with certain other Privacy Sandbox APIs, as outlined on the Privacy Sandbox feature status page).
Blink component
Web Feature ID
None
Motivation
Chrome has announced that the current approach to third-party cookies will be maintained. Since that announcement there has been virtually no interest in the Protected Audience API. Use of the joinAdInterestGroup() API has decreased by almost 100x and use of the runAdAuction() API has decreased by more than 10x. Of the auctions occurring today, virtually none of them have winners (determined by looking at the “Success” bucket count of the Ads.InterestGroup.Auction.Result UMA), implying that they are not providing useful benefit to the pages initiating them.
Initial public proposal
https://privacysandbox.com/news/update-on-plans-for-privacy-sandbox-technologies/.
Developer-facing impact
Given that virtually none of the Protected Audience auctions occurring today have winners, we estimate the lost utility from this removal to be negligible.
User-facing risks
The user-facing risks are small. While removing the JavaScript API could cause pages to break, the impact should be limited to sites that don't employ standard defensive coding or feature detection, which should be rare since not all browsers implement the API.
If usage warrants, we will take steps to avoid any risk of page breakage, e.g. by temporarily retaining a stub implementation of Navigator APIs joinAdInterestGroup(), runAdAuction(), leaveAdInterestGroup(), clearOriginJoinedAdInterestGroups(), getInterestGroupAdAuctionData(), canLoadAdAuctionFencedFrame(), createAuctionNonce(), updateAdInterestGroups(), protectedAudience.queryFeatureSupport(), deprecatedReplaceInURN(), deprecatedURNtoURL(), and adAuctionComponents() that mimic current behavior when a user has disabled Protected Audience.
Estimated milestones
Planning to deprecate in M144 and remove in M150.
Currently 0.22% of page loads use the Protected Audience API. These are driven by a small number of third-party ad tech scripts present on a large number of sites. We will continue to monitor usage as well as provide comprehensive updates on privacysandbox.google.com with the status of the API and deprecation plans.
We will also proactively work toward reducing usage to low levels once this intent is approved, including disallowing any new enrollment sign-ups, and contacting enrolled sites to inform them about the deprecation timelines.
Protected Audience features that were never launched beyond 20% Stable (TextEncoder support, Creative scanning via BYOS/V1 trusted scoring signals, Selectable Reporting IDs) will be ramped down by the end of 2025.
Protected Audience services, Bidding and Auction services and Trusted Key Value service, will not onboard new clients once deprecation is approved. We will work with onboarded clients and plan to turn down the services by the end of year as usage is negligible today. This will have no user-facing or web-compat impact.