Summary and links to web publisher considerations for in-browser ad placements
A significant number of issues have been raised about how to make TURTLEDOVE (and other related bird-themed proposals for in-browser ad auctions) work for marketers, but little has been discussed about how this can work for publishers. We have identified a number of potential issues in TURTLEDOVE that would have a significant negative impact on publishers' businesses unless they were resolved.
This document covers ad placement. We plan to create a similar document around reporting issues from the Privacy Sandbox proposals and how they impact publishers' businesses.
These issues also present problems for users, who are likely to experience problems with exposure to malware or otherwise harmful or undesirable ads, and a lower-quality experience as more ads are able to game the system and fail to support high-engagement publisher properties.
This document refers to a "web property" and not a site, to recognize that the set of locations with common data stewardship and advertising management may not necessarily be a "site" as defined in web standards. A web property may span multiple subdomains, registerable domains and schemas. (We suggest the use of this term as we agree with a recent suggestion that the distinctions among the terms "first party" and "third party" are not easily understood by web users and developers.)
We will update this document with links to relevant issues. Two general issues that have raised related points are:
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Capabilities of the proposal for publishers · Issue #51 · WICG/turtledove
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TurtleDove: Ambiguity in level of decision making. · Issue #73 · WICG/turtledove
Conclusion: why we believe these needs are necessary for a viable replacement to existing cross-publisher IDs
The goal of improving advertising must ensure publishers are not negatively impacted by new W3C standards as this would have a negative impact on the availability, diversity, quality or publisher web content and services. If browser APIs interferes or disproportionately impacts publisher ability to compete against larger rivals, then web publishers are likely to avoid support for in-browser ad placement proposals.