Google’s updated policy on IP addresses is already common in much of the connected TV ad tech landscape.
Google will now allow advertisers to use IP addresses in ad targeting, a policy update that comes as marketers are hungry for more data about the consumers they’re trying to reach.
Critics quickly said the move defies a long-held privacy position against “fingerprinting.” Google said it would implement IP usage through privacy-safe technology, and noted that the practice is common throughout ad land.
Google is allowing advertisers to tap into IP (internet protocol) addresses, the code that identifies a device’s connection to the web, to serve ads with more precision and to track campaign outcomes, especially on connected TVs.
Previously, Google had a policy against sharing IP addresses with advertisers, considering it a privacy risk. Advertisers have been pushing Google to open that data as they need signals to clarify the pathway consumers take from device to device and location to location. Creating profiles of consumers based on data cues emanating from their devices and internet connections is referred to as “fingerprinting.”
IP addresses already proliferate throughout digital advertising, a point Google explained in its policy update earlier this week: “Internet Protocol (IP) addresses are already commonly used in the broader ads ecosystem to help marketers reach people across their customer journey and measure how their ads are working, especially on CTV,” Google stated.
Google had been notably resistant to sharing that information until now. Recently, Netflix has been building an ad business without wanting to share IP addresses as a targeting tool. Meanwhile, rivals such as Amazon, Meta, The Trade Desk and others have made use of the signal in their ad platforms.
Google’s policy was announced on Wednesday and is set to take effect on Feb. 16, 2025.
Google said that the change was made because it was comfortable with new privacy-preserving measures that could handle the data responsibly.
“Advances in privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) such as on-device processing, trusted execution environments, and secure multi-party computation, are unlocking new ways for brands to manage and activate their data safely,” Google stated in its policy update. “We’ve been working to integrate PETs such as confidential computing into our ads products to help businesses tailor their ads and measure results, in ways that allow them to securely use their first-party data without re-identifying users.”
“Re-identifying users” is a key point, and one privacy advocates will likely be watching to see whether Google can prevent participants in ad markets from using these signals to unlock individual identities. Google’s policy change is a sign of shifts in ad tech, where privacy concerns have grown and brands have to guard against leaking data they collect on consumers.
The ad industry has been investing in resources such as data clean rooms and applying encryption techniques, broadly referred to as “privacy-enhancing technology.”
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There are skeptics of the industry’s efforts, notably the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which issued a report last month outlining concerns about data clean rooms: “How a technology is named doesn’t tell you how it is used,” the FTC report said. “This is the case with Data Clean Rooms, which are not rooms, do not clean data, and have complicated implications for user privacy, despite their squeaky-clean name.”
However, data has been cut off in many parts of the digital world, and advertisers are scrambling. Apple has prevented apps, publishers and marketers from using certain identifiers without strictly following consumer preferences on its devices and browsers. Google has been trying to develop alternative ad tech systems that don’t rely on invasive data collection by building what it called Privacy Sandbox. That is a new method for buying ads without using cookies, the internet trackers, and without passing user data into online ad auctions. Google was trying to kill cookies this year, but regulators also pressured the company to slow that down.
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Now, Google plans to launch Privacy Sandbox next year while allowing individual users to choose whether they want third-party cookies, instead of altogether shutting them off. Google is caught between managing privacy demands and its need to preserve competition in ad markets, where it would seemingly gain an edge over rivals if it cut them off from data.
Google has been involved in two U.S. antitrust cases this year. It lost one case involving its search business, now deemed a monopoly, and is awaiting a ruling in its alleged ad tech monopoly case.
Advertisers always want more flexibility with data in ad platforms as they need to measure key components of campaigns.
Google’s update will lead to more efficient ad buys, “especially in CTV,” while balancing privacy, said Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab, which was born out of IAB, the digital ad trade group.
IP addresses are already established as a data source in most CTV marketplaces, Katsur said in a statement shared with Ad Age, adding that they “ensure that spots are properly frequency capped and viewers are not bombarded with the same ad over and over.”
There is an especially high degree of fragmentation in the connected TV ad markets, with multiple device makers and operating systems, which make IP addresses a valuable link to households. Google’s demand-side rival The Trade Desk recently announced it was building a connected TV operating system that will launch next year, a move widely seen as a chance to secure more data connections.
“It makes a lot of sense to use IP addresses as the baseline tracking system for CTV,” said Navah Hopkins, ad specialist and public evangelist at Optmyzr, a digital marketing platform. “For a CTV advertiser, IP address is a godsend.”
Still, if Google delivers on its privacy restrictions governing how IP addresses are used, that could stunt their effectiveness, Hopkins said.
“That’s the problem, I don’t think any platform, not just Google, can maintain the promise of privacy and precision with the amount of regulations and rules that every country has to follow at this point,” Hopkins said.
Google’s critics pounced on its new stance. Arielle Garcia, director of intelligence at Check My Ads, the advertising watchdog group, said that for years Google claimed to be staunchly against fingerprinting, specifically because the practice relied on signals such as IP addresses. IP addresses are pesky because they can’t be cleared by a user like cookies on a browser, so they lend to ongoing tracking. On LinkedIn, Garcia called Google’s move a “very blatant walkback.”
Now, as Google claims it can use privacy tech and adhere to consumer choices to prevent abuse, some ad tech experts said they did not see the harm.
“I think it means that they will allow IP [addresses] as a key into clean rooms, which makes sense if they believe they can do those matches without disclosing the IP to the counterparty, just like they do with email now,” said Brian O’Kelley, CEO of demand-side platform Scope3. “It sort of makes sense: Why do we think email is riskier than IP?”
