On January 25, Chrome announced Topics, a new Privacy Sandbox proposal for interest-based advertising. Topics are recognizable interest categories (for example “Fitness” or “Family Travel”) that represent the user’s top interests, based on their recent browsing history. The Topics API can be used to help personalize ads, without sharing specific sites the user has visited. Users can see their topics in Chrome’s settings, remove any they don’t like, or disable the feature altogether. The Topics proposal replaces and improves upon the earlier FLoC proposal.
Many of the features of the Topics proposal were informed by FLoC feedback, and Chrome is eager to work with the web community to test and refine this new proposal.
Scott Friesen, Strategic Partnerships, Chrome shared the latest from Chrome on Topics in this webinar on 28th April 2022.
Scott’s presentation deck is available to view below.
Scott manages Chrome and Web Partnerships in the UK and has 10 years experience working on web and advertising technologies. At Google he has previously worked on launches of new web app APIs and performance initiatives with publishers, content creators and platforms. Since 2019 he has been helping to educate the web ecosystem about the Privacy Sandbox, Chrome’s efforts to protect people’s privacy online while enabling a sustainable open web.