Goodbye Cookies, Hello PAAPI

A proposal for retargeting on Chrome without third-party cookies could be nearly as effective as retargeting with third-party cookies.

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Amid the chaos of Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox, PAAPI might just be the underdog marketers need in a cookieless future.

A new study suggests that Protected Audiences API (PAAPI), a proposal for retargeting on Chrome without third-party cookies, could be nearly as effective as retargeting with third-party cookies.

Researchers tested retargeting across more than 2,000 advertisers, comparing three groups:

  1. Users with third-party cookies

  2. Those using only PAAPI

  3. A cookieless group

No cookies? No clicks.

The cookieless group saw a dramatic 90% drop in clicks and conversions.

However, PAAPI users fared better, with a 50% decrease in ad clicks and conversions compared to the third-party cookie baseline.

PAAPI’s potential

While a 50% recovery rate may seem underwhelming, the study's lead researcher suggests "if you adjust for expenditure, PAAPI works pretty well."

In other words, PAAPI-powered retargeting appears only half as effective as retargeting using third-party cookies, but that’s because Privacy Sandbox adoption is low across the ad tech ecosystem, particularly among supply-side platforms.

There still isn’t as much ad supply with PAAPI enabled as there are third-party cookie impressions for sale.

The study found that when the research results were adjusted for ad spend and impressions, PAAPI was about 85% as effective as third-party cookies for clicks and 80% as effective for conversions per dollar.

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YouTube Gives Channels More Ad Blocking Control

YouTube's latest update might be a win for brand safety, but an L for advertisers.

The platform is adding ad category blocking for channels, which will let creators block specific categories of ads from showing up alongside their content.

While channels have always been able to block ads through AdSense, this feature will now be available directly on YouTube.

YouTube says that by the end of this week, ad blocking controls will be accessible at the channel level through YouTube Studio on desktop for creators with watch page monetization enabled.

The platform warns that restricting ads could hurt a channel’s revenue, but it gives creators more control over the ads running alongside their videos.

New features

YouTube rolled out several other updates including:

  • Poll Stickers for Shorts: Creators can now add poll stickers directly to their Shorts, letting viewers tap and vote on options.

  • Views Format Filter: A new format filter has been added to the “Views” display, letting users see a breakdown of views by content type.

  • Super Chat Goals: YouTube is testing Super Chat goals for live streams and Premieres, gamifying revenue generation by displaying a countdown to a target on-screen and offering a reward chosen by the creator for reaching it.

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