NEW YORK—IAB Tech Lab, the global digital advertising technical standards-setting body, has established two new working groups that it said will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of digital media and advertising: the Privacy Sandbox Task Force and the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Subcommittee.
"AI is not just a technological tool; it's a force reshaping our media landscape,” explained Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab. “Its impact extends across content creation, distribution, consumption, consumer privacy, and monetization. The AI Subcommittee is poised to assume a vital role in comprehending and directing Tech Lab’s AI roadmap to manage this evolution."
In terms of the Privacy Sandbox Task Force, the IAB said that digital advertising faces a significant turning point with the evolving Privacy Sandbox within Google's Chrome browser. In creating the Privacy Sandbox Task Force, the IAB Tech Lab said that this specialized task force is dedicated to conducting a rigorous technical and operational analysis of the forthcoming Privacy Sandbox modifications and their implications for digital advertising use cases.
Key objectives include:
- Technical Examination: Explore the technical intricacies of Google Chrome's Privacy Sandbox updates, including the protected audience API and Attribution Reporting API, to understand their implications for advertisers, publishers, and ad tech providers.
- Operational Insight: Analyze operational shifts that stakeholders in digital advertising must adapt to, ensuring the consistent delivery, optimization, and measurement of digital ads.
- Gap Analysis: Analyze, understand, and document the critical advertising use cases supported by the Privacy Sandbox and what gaps need to be addressed and propose improvements to ensure the needs of brands and publishers are properly addressed.
- Recommendations: Provide actionable guidance and update existing or introduce new technical standards for the digital advertising ecosystem to address the changes introduced by the Chrome browser. The Task Force will publish its analysis and recommendations for the industry's benefit later this year.
"Given their worldwide market share of approximately 65%, understanding the shifts brought about by Chrome's Privacy Sandbox development is crucial,” said Katsur.
Katsur emphasized the importance of this subcommittee by adding that the Privacy Sandbox Task Force welcomes all IAB Tech Lab members and encourages digital advertising stakeholders globally who have performed testing or analyzed the Privacy Sandbox proposals to participate. Collaborative engagement will be vital in navigating this significant development in the advertising industry.
For more details or to express an interest in joining, visit: https://iabtechlab.com/working-groups/privacy-sandbox-task-force/
The AI Subcommittee was created due to the transformative impact of AI on the digital media landscape. This subcommittee, composed of a select group of IAB Tech Lab Board members, is dedicated to exploring the rapidly evolving intersection of AI technologies with the world of digital media.
The AI Subcommittee's key objectives include:
- Roadmap Development: Identifying near, short-and long-term roadmap deliverables to address AI's impact on the digital media ecosystem, with an initial focus on media companies.
- Ethical Framework Creation: Addressing ethical challenges associated with AI in media by creating new technical standards and frameworks to ensure content remains trustworthy, transparent, and respects user privacy.
- AI Media Trends Analysis: Conducting a comprehensive analysis of AI-driven trends in digital media, encompassing content recommendation algorithms, virtual reality, generative AI, and deepfake technology.
The group said that the AI Subcommittee is open exclusively to IAB Tech Lab Board Members, bringing together data scientists, publisher executives, cryptographers, and technology leaders from publishers, agencies, and big tech platforms to collaborate on shaping an informed, ethical, and exciting future for AI in digital media.
