Federated Learning of Cohorts or FLoC is a new targeting approach to reach the relevant audiences on the internet without affecting the user’s privacy. Google and other Tech Firms are proposing many new technologies mentioned here to reach the relevant users in the cookieless world. In this article, I will walk you through FLoC technology and explain the execution steps of FLoC to reach relevant audiences in the cookieless world without affecting user’s privacy.
FLoC – Alternative Of Cookieless Advertising
Table Of Contents:
Will FLoC Be A Solution For Third Party Cookielss World?
What Is Cookieless World?
Mozilla FireFox and Apple’s Safari browser already stop supporting third party cookies to improve the user’s privacy online. Google Chrome browser planned to stop support third party cookies from end of 2024. The browsers without third party cookies support are called “Cookieless World”.
Read More : Cookieless World: What Are The Alternatives Available For Digital Advertising?
What Is FLoC?
The expansion for FLoC is Federated Learning of Cohorts. FLoC is a Privacy Sandbox initiative that focuses on interest based advertising on third party cookieless world while protecting user’s privacy.
In FLoC technology, users are grouped under different cohorts [group] based on their recent browsing history. So, many people are grouped under each cohorts. These cohorts id’s shared with the advertising platform and advertisers can target relevant cohorts to reach interest based audiences.
This is also similar to the third party cookies concept. In third party cookies environment, third party cookie id of a particular user is shared to other parties. In FLoC technology, users grouped under Cohorts and Cohorts ID’s only shared with the advertising platforms. Under each cohorts id, large count of users is available. So, identifying a single user on a cohort is impossible. That’s how user’s privacy will be secured in FLoC technology.
How Does FLoC work?
First, the browsers need to accept and implement the FLoC technology. Second, the advertising platforms develop a facility to use the FLoC technology to target the audiences based on Cohorts Id.
Step 1 : The browsers need to adopt and implement FLoC technology.
Step 2 : Many different Cohorts categories are available and each is assigned a Cohorts Id. For example, Sports [#32224], Food [#44533], Travel [#55644], etc available
Step 3 : Based on recent browser history, the browsers moved under the related cohort group. For example, if a browser searches travel related content recently then this browser is grouped under the Travel [#55644] cohort group.
Step 4 : At a particular time, one browser can be in a single cohort group and it is always transferable based on recent browser history. For example, The same user under the cohort group Travel [#55644] started to browse food related content means his browser will be moved to the Food [#44533] cohort group.
Step 5 : Advertiser’s website :
Using the same FLoC technology, advertisers can monitor the activity of cohorts on their pages and share the details with the ad tech platforms.
1.For example, advertiser’s website is “shoes.com”
2.Lets take, User A available under the Travel cohort visits “shoes.com” and is more interested in hiking shoes.
3.Advertiser shares this information with the ad tech platform. So, ad tech platform chooses the right ad and displays his browser when he visits other sites.
4.Other than that, User B available under the same Travel cohort visit a third party website and ad call request sent to a ad tech platform.
5.User B didn’t visit the advertiser page before. But, under the same cohort user [user A] showed more interest in hiking shoes. So, this advertiser’s hiking shoes ad will be displayed to User B. This is nearly like a lookalike model.
This is how advertisers can display their ads more relevant to the users in cookieless world.
Will FLoC Be A Solution For Third Party Cookielss World?
The direct answer is “No”. As per the current proposals, we can’t find the exact users in a cookieless world without affecting user privacy. FLoC is one type of proposal to show the relevant ads without affecting user privacy. The relevancy is high in FLoC model than delivering the ads without any targeting.
Conclusion
Many companies put huge money into online advertising. They are always interested in showing their advertisements to the users who might have an interest in their products. In cookieless world, it is very difficult to identify the user’s interest. Without third party cookie, the advertising platforms and data providers can’t identify the user’s interest online. Already, Google provides many proposals under the Privacy Sandbox initiative like FLoC.
In FLoC technology, browsers are grouped under different cohorts based on the recent browsing history. When users visit the third party websites, the cohorts information is shared with the ad tech platforms. Finally, advertisers can show the relevant cohorts and deliver their ads.
FLoC technology is still in the early stages. Based on the trials and feedback from different ad tech firms it will be live.
