As platform and regulatory changes continue to evolve, it’s more important than ever to continue building trust with your customers while respecting their privacy. Technologies like confidential computing, which use special software and hardware known as Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), unlock new ways for businesses to use their first-party data to reach customers and measure the impact of their digital ad campaigns. It also gives added data security and transparency, by isolating your business information during processing so that no one — including Google — can access the data being processed.
We’re introducing confidential matching, a new way to securely connect your first-party data for our measurement and audience solutions. This marks only the first use of confidential computing in our Ads products, and we plan to bring this privacy enhancing technology to more products over time.
Secure by default
For advertisers, the use of confidential computing means added protections for your customers’ information that are secure by default. Other technical assurances include transparency into a product’s code and the ability to receive proof, known as “attestation,” that data is processed as intended.
TEEs are already a proven technology, used across different industries to protect data like passwords and credit card numbers. For example, Confidential Space — part of Google Cloud’s confidential computing portfolio — is used by MonetaGo for secure financial fraud detection. In other applications, it enables privacy preserving data sharing between businesses because of its unique security properties. We’re using this same Confidential Space technology, which has already received rigorous security reviews from third-party auditors, as the technical foundation in Ads for confidential matching.
In line with our privacy principles, we’re committed to making confidential computing and other complementary technologies accessible to everyone. That is why confidential matching will be available at no additional cost to customers. Also, we’re sharing our TEE architecture along with a few open source examples to help others build confidential solutions. We’re continuing to work alongside others in the ads industry to further adoption of and build standards for this privacy enhancing technology.
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“IAB Tech Lab has been advocating for privacy-enhancing technologies for years. Google’s use of confidential computing shows the continued momentum in adopting PET-powered solutions. We look forward to working with Google and others across the industry to evolve Tech Lab’s technical best practices and guidelines, open technical standards, and open-source solutions. We need collaboration in these areas to ensure the success of privacy-enhancing technologies in the digital ad economy.”
— Anthony Katsur, CEO, IAB Tech Lab
Built for the future
Confidential matching is now the default for any data connections made for Customer Match including Google Ads Data Manager — with no action required from you. For advertisers with very strict data policies, it also means the ability to encrypt the data yourself before it ever leaves your servers.
“Confidential matching gives us peace of mind that we’re meeting our customer’s privacy expectations while growing our business and navigating a changing digital landscape.”
— Markus Käppeli, Head of search engine marketing and web analytics, Möbel Pfister AG
In the coming months, we’ll continue to roll out encryption support in confidential matching globally. We also plan to expand our use of confidential matching across more of our advertising solutions. For example, in the next few months enhanced conversions implemented with the Google tag will start rolling out first-party data processed with confidential matching. Processing will happen behind the scenes, without changing how you measure conversions or manage your Google tag.
Keep your information safe
We’ve been investing in privacy-preserving technology and secure data practices for years. As part of our portfolio approach to ads privacy, confidential matching is the next chapter in embracing innovations that can help our customers in new ways. This is only the first step toward making confidential computing an accessible and powerful marketing tool that helps you continue to keep your customers’ personal information safe.
SOURCE: Google