The European Publishers Council welcomes the CMA’s decision that the revised approach of Google on its Privacy Sandbox continues to raise competition concerns. Google had announced over the summer that instead of removing third-party cookies from Chrome, it will allow users to choose whether to retain third party cookies which sparked a new round of consultations with affected stakeholders including the European Publishers Council.
EPC is highly concerned that the change will continue to have a substantial impact on a publisher’s capacity to generate revenues from digital advertising. In particular, the dominant position of Google’s ad tech services combined with the significant market presence of Chrome are likely to increase the risk of self-preferencing towards other Google products and thereby prevent the industry from having any real market choice but to use the Sandbox tools. We welcome the CMA’s objective to seek new and adapted commitments from Google and we look forward to contributing the views of the publishers on these commitments to the CMA.
Publishers are the best placed party to engage with their readers. Any decision made through a user agent can never be as specific as a direct engagement. Users should be able to take privacy decisions specifically tailored to the news outlet and content they like to enjoy. In the European consent based environment, choices mechanisms, designed by a single company, that apply across a user’s web browsing are unlikely to take a user’s granular preferences into consideration, and raise substantial data protection issues through their design and default settings as well as issues for joint accountability with publishers and advertisers. We call on the ICO to review the approach taken by Google and to coordinate with the CMA.
Publishers are concerned that the current APIs developed by the sandbox are not yet effective to provide an adequate level of monetisation. The implementation of the new experience on Chrome should be delayed until the overall performance of the sandbox has reached a satisfactory level for publishers, advertisers, and everyone involved in online advertising.
Angela Mills Wade, Executive Director of EPC said: “More than ever, the decision made by Google on the privacy sandbox brings together huge privacy and competition considerations. Introducing a user choice prompt instead of removing 3rd party cookies from Chrome does not alleviate publishers’ concerns over their capacity to monetise content, necessary to produce journalistically driven content, which plays a vital role in supporting democratic societies. Our concerns remain the same”.