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ALEX XIA: Hi, my name is Alex Xia.
And I'm a Strategic Partner Development Manager
on the Privacy Sandbox team.
It's my pleasure to talk to you all today about the efforts
to bring the Privacy Sandbox to the Android platform.
In this talk, I will start with a brief refresher
of what the Privacy Sandbox on Android entails.
Then, we will walk through a couple of advertising use cases
and when to expect releases and new features.
Finally, we will review some resources to help get started
and stay up to date.
The Privacy Sandbox aims to improve user privacy
without putting access to free content and services
at risk for the mobile ecosystem.
Effective advertising is a key component of achieving this,
but this should not come at the expense of user privacy.
As a publisher, these APIs allow you to monetize your app
with relevant and high-performing ads
while still protecting the privacy of your users.
App developers can typically work with their advertising SDK
providers to begin discussion around their plans
to integrate to the Privacy Sandbox on Android.
As an advertiser, these APIs will
allow you to serve ads to relevant users based
on their interests and any previous interactions
with your app.
You can also continue to measure the performance
of your advertising campaigns.
So how do we do this?
As you heard earlier, there are many projects
across the Privacy Sandbox on the web and Android.
But for Android, specifically, there are four key initiatives.
The first is the Topics API, which
gathers on-device information to estimate the topics of interest
to a particular user, which advertising SDKs can then
use to target relevant users with relevant ads.
The FLEDGE API opens up more complex advertising use cases.
It helps orchestrate ad selection workflows and show
remarketing ads based on custom audience
defined by app developers.
The Attribution Reporting API supports the measurement
of impressions, clicks, and conversions of an ad
and sends reports to advertisers that
detail the performance of their advertising campaign
while still protecting the privacy of the users who
interacted with the ad.
Together, these three initiatives
form the privacy-preserving ads APIs
that you will find across both the web and the Android Privacy
Sandbox solutions.
Finally, the separate SDK Runtime initiative
allows third-party, ads-related SDKs
to run in a dedicated runtime environment that
provides additional safeguards around user data
collection and sharing, and help prevent fingerprinting
techniques.
This is unique to the Android platform.
Since our initial announcement in February 2022,
we have been busy releasing developer previews
of the Privacy Sandbox, which allows
you to integrate and test all of the initiatives
I just mentioned.
Right now, you can check out what's
new in Developer Preview 7, which
was released within the last couple of weeks.
We're excited to announce our plan
to enable testing of the Privacy Sandbox
on public mobile devices in early 2023
as we launch our first stable API
release for you to integrate.
This is when our API beta testing
will begin for ad tech developers as well
as a small limited beta for the SDK runtime.
After that, we will continue releasing developer previews
in parallel to stable API releases
to expose the latest features.
It is worth noting that the developer previews will
continue to be where we will first deliver the latest
features for early feedback before being released
on production devices.
To test against developer previews and stable releases,
developers will need to complete an enrollment
process that enable access to the Privacy Sandbox on Android.
Details can be found on the Android developer's website.
Stable API release one was released on February 14, 2023.
The Privacy Sandbox was made available
on a small percentage of eligible Android 13 devices.
Let's talk through how this rollout will happen.
To start with, we will initially be opening beta testing
to organizations that wish to validate
the functionality of the privacy-preserving APIs
on their own production Android 13 devices
for a small handful of app partners including
any internal test apps.
With [INAUDIBLE] validation completed,
we will then make the Privacy Sandbox
available on a small percentage of Android 13 devices.
This would enable early testers of the APIs
to begin validating their solutions
against real-world traffic.
Successful testing would then allow
us to expand the availability to more users and devices
while opening the doors to allow any app and ad tech
partner to determine the scalability of their API
solutions.
And, finally, we would expand the Privacy Sandbox
to be available on all eligible Android devices.
This is when we expect a lot of the industry
to begin large-scale A/B testing to evaluate the full set of API
solutions for their utility.
So when is the best time to start
testing the Privacy Sandbox?
The answer is right now.
The sooner developers start incorporating the Privacy
Sandbox, the more actions we can take
on any feedback you might have during integration.
We need your help to make the best product that we can.
So, please, work with your advertising technology partners
to understand they're on testing preparation
and how you can be involved.
And, finally, you can always find the latest information
on the Android developer's website.
The URL is here.
On the site, you will find the latest documents
for our designs and integration guides.
You'll also find GitHub links for sample apps, videos
that help explain these initiatives in more details,
plus links where you can provide feedback on these solutions
directly to our product and engineering teams.
Thank you for your time and for all of your engagement so far.
It's an exciting road ahead, and we look forward
to continually working with all of you.
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