Inside YouTube's Latest Privacy Updates And How They Affect Advertisers
The company has reinstated third-party ad serving (kind of) as its GDPR-compliance policy on tracking goes global
By Ronan Shields
Ads Data Hub policies mean third parties can only extract a limited amount of insights from the platform.
Photo Illustration: Trent Joaquin; Sources: YouTube, Getty Images
Sandwiched between the enforcement of stringent privacy rules on either side of the Atlantic, YouTube has made a series of adjustments on how advertisers can work with third parties to assess the performance of ad campaigns on the industry's largest video-sharing network.
The moves come as U.S. advertisers increasingly turn to such audience hubs as an alternative to the broadcast reach that television was able to play in the execution of their media plans with more than $27 billion spent on video ads last year, almost 25% of total digital budgets, per eMarketer.
While the research firm claims Facebook dominates the space with a 25% market share, eMarketer noted that while it doesn't count YouTube as a social network, "its importance in the video ad space is too large to ignore." When you generate $3.36 billion in ad revenue in the U.S. alone (approximately 11% of Google's ad revenue there) you really shouldn't be ignored.
To that end, YouTube used its recent Upfront dog-and-pony Brandcast to announce that all of its original programing would be free to the end-user and supported by ad revenue, indicating the future role it will play in disrupting the traditional TV media space.
At the same time, YouTube's chief business officer Robert Kyncl kept describing advertisers as "our partners" ahead of its annual pitch to TV buyers, signaling perhaps the video platform's new approach of how brands can use the platform as an advertising clearinghouse.
A recent YouTube policy updated concerns of how brands work with third-party tech companies when it comes to serving ads on the industry's largest video website. The update, effective April 24, has origins dating back to early 2017 when YouTube said it was to roll back third-party ad tracking, with only a handful of advertising measurement providers such as Nielsen and ComScore (among others) able to do so.
YouTube's GDPR-inspired changes will go global
At that time, YouTube was planning for the enforcement of General Data Protection Regulations in the European Economic Area on May 25, 2018, and it ceased to support third-party ad serving, seeking alternative means of working with such parties while not running afoul of the data privacy regulations.
Effectively, this shut off third-party ad serving in the EU with a global rollout of the same policy planned as lawmakers elsewhere prepared to shore-up privacy, as signaled by the planned introduction of the California Consumer Privacy Act in 2020.
Skeptics assert that Google (and YouTube's) GDPR-compliance policies announced in May 2018 were a means of it using regulation as an excuse to erect its walled garden even higher. One of the reasons is that during this time, it also pressed ahead with the rollout of Ads Data Hub (ADH) whereby approved third parties such as Adform, Extreme Reach, Flashtalking, Innovid and Sizmek among its official partners could measure campaigns.
From April 24, YouTube recommenced supporting third-party ad serving using a new API-based framework with the above-named independent ad tech companies as launch partners via way of their ADH integration, which introduced limitations on how they can access consumer data.
Despite criticisms around walled gardens, a statement from a Google spokesperson asserted that its recent policy update is pragmatic both in terms of regulation compliance and user experience.
"This framework, now available globally, benefits both advertisers and users as it increases privacy protections and decreases ad load times," it read.
How the latest YouTube policies actually work
Adweek spoke with several sources from the independent ad-tech sector, including those directly involved with the latest API initiative, to better understand the changes over the past 12 months.
Formerly, third parties could drop a pixel on YouTube and then track a user retrospectively, but this is now only possible by working with approved third parties and in a limited capacity via ADH.
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Ronan Shields
@ronan_shields
Ronan Shields is a reporter for Adweek, focusing on ad-tech.
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