Without Amazon visitors in the mix, Google’s FLoC could be at a disadvantage, said one agency executive who spoke anonymously with Digiday. Put simply, it is not in Amazon’s best interest to let outsiders like Google or other ad tech firms take advantage of its valuable shopper data.
With an influx of shoppers expected to flood to the site on its Prime Days on June 21 and 22, now is the time to put up an electric fence preventing Google from feeding off that valuable data trough. Already, as reported by Digiday last week, ad tech firms and agencies are gathering and analyzing FLoC ID data in the hopes of improving targeting and identification capabilities.
While it may seem obvious that Amazon would want to throw a wrench in any Google initiative, the company has plenty of reasons for hindering FLoC’s success.įirst, Amazon wants to protect its intellectual property - the prized data it has that shows what products people research, review and buy online. Google says FLoC is intended to protect people’s privacy because it uses machine learning to group them based on the web pages they have viewed rather than tracking them at the individual level. Right now, the system is in a pilot phase, assembling data indicating what websites, content and products people are interested in. One technologist who asked not to be named for this story said the distinction is noteworthy because the approach Amazon has implemented for most sites employs the technique recommended by Google, which is therefore “known to be 100% effective,” according to the technologist, who said the approach used to block FLoC on Whole Foods pages could be an oversight or a deliberate choice on Amazon’s part, possibly as a test of some kind. While other Amazon-owned domains mentioned here that block FLoC do so using Google’s recommended approach involving sending a response header from HTML pages, Whole Foods blocking employs a tactic that sends an opt-out header from Amazon analytics requests. There is a caveat regarding FLoC blocking on Whole Foods pages, however. While one of the technologists saw both of those sites blocking FLoC, another did not, and said Amazon’s deployment could be evident on different servers in different parts of the country.
Amazon tracking id code#
For example, while earlier in the week and did not include code to block FLoC, by Thursday Digiday saw that those sites did feature code telling Google’s system not to include activities of their visitors to inform cohorts or assign IDs. With the help of three technologists, Digiday watched last week as Amazon added code to its digital properties to block FLoC from tracking visitors using Google’s Chrome browser. She called Amazon’s choice to block FLoC on most of its sites another example of the chess moves Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon are making as data privacy pressures force the destruction of the foundation of data tracking across the internet: the third party cookie. “This move is in direct correlation with Google’s attempt to provide an alternative to the third-party cookie,” said Amanda Martin, vp of enterprise partnerships at digital agency Goodway Group. Amazon declined to comment on this story.Īs Google’s system gathers data about people’s web travels to inform how it categorizes them, Amazon’s under-the-radar move could not only be a significant blow to Google’s mission to guide the future of digital ad tracking after cookies die - it could give Amazon a leg up in its own efforts to sell advertising across what’s left of the open web.
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