Some of the biggest names in advertising are banding together in reaction to looming privacy changes being made by tech giants Google and Apple.
The effort, dubbed “Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media,” includes Procter & Gamble, Unilever, General Motors, IBM and Ford; publisher NBCUniversal; agencies UM and Publicis Media; ad buying platforms The Trade Desk, MediaMath and Adobe; and trade bodies including the Association of National Advertisers, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and its Tech Lab, Network Advertising Initiative, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) and the World Federation of Advertisers.
Google is eliminating third-party cookies from its popular Chrome browser in 2022, while Apple is going to start requiring apps to obtain user consent in areas such as tracking with its Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) this fall. Each impacts areas such as ad targeting, analytics and how digital ads are bought and sold—marketers who used third-party cookies and IDFA to personalize and target must now reconsider their audience strategies.
Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media (PRAM) says it intends to solve these issues by developing new standards for the broader industry to adopt, all while maintaining compliance with consumer privacy laws including California's Consumer Privacy Act.
Google and Apple were not invited to the group, assembled over a three month span, according to Bill Tucker, who is spearheading PRAM and who also serves as group exec VP at the ANA.
“We did not invite them for the simple reason that we need to develop our point of view,” says Tucker. “We are reacting to what they did to us.”
Apple declined to comment; Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.