This information then becomes available to marketers. It then groups different users’ SimHashes together according to surmised interests. Based on the domains that a given user is visiting, the browser develops what’s called a SimHash. Google is able to create FLoC cohorts by evaluating users’ browsing behavior. So it still gives some idea of what you’re looking at, but you can’t reconstruct the entire big picture just from the little thumbnail.” And your FLoC cohort is a little thumbnail image. “So you can think of your browser history like a big photo that you might download from your digital camera. “FLoC takes your whole browser history and compresses it down to a single number,” says Don Marti, vice-president of ecosystem innovation at digital media company CafeMedia.
According to Google, cohorts are large enough to create anonymity for users – and therefore increase data privacy – but are focused enough to enable advertisers to engage in effective ad targeting. Each cohort is assigned an ID and users’ browsers – if they are not running a FLoC-blocking technology like DuckDuckGo’s Chrome extension – can identify the cohort to which the user belongs. Whereas third-party cookies track individual user activity across the web, FLoC proposes a more privacy-centric approach wherein users are grouped together (in ‘cohorts’) based on similar interests and behaviors. Microsoft-owned hosting platform GitHub and Mozilla Firefox have also announced they will be blocking the technology.Īt a time when marketers are looking for simple answers to the increasingly complex question of how to target online audiences effectively, what does it all mean? What’s all the FLoCing noise about? Understanding the basics of Google FLoC It proposes a new method of gathering user data for targeted advertising purposes. FLoC is Google’s answer to the impending death of the third-party cookie. Players from across the board are joining DuckDuckGo and the likes in rejection of Google’s Federated Learning of Cohorts API (FLoC). What has been surprising, however, is that the trend is growing.
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