Mozilla has just revealed an alliance that is surprising to say the least. Indeed, the open source foundation is now collaborating with the Meta group to develop new advertising performance technology. baptized Interoperable Private Attribution (IPA), its purpose is to allow advertisers to measure the conversion rate of their advertising campaigns, i.e. to know how many views have generated sales. Currently, this performance metric relies on individual ID numbers that are collected during views and sales. From the point of view of the protection of personal data, this is obviously not satisfactory.
The solution offered by Mozilla and Meta uses a mix of cryptographic techniques to preserve the anonymity of Internet users while allowing advertisers to have precise measurements on their campaigns. A unique key is assigned to each Internet user, but it is anonymized by a process combining encryption, alteration and aggregation, all distributed among several actors, so that it is impossible for one of the participants to find the identity of origin.
Mozilla and Meta aren’t the only ones working on new ad technologies. Google, for its part, seeks to create a targeted advertising ecosystem where cookies would be replaced by lists of centers of interest calculated directly in the browser (“Topics”). Note that the IPA and Topics technologies do not target the same problem and are therefore not in competition. On the contrary, they would even be complementary.
On the Web, the Mozilla-Meta alliance nevertheless causes some turmoil. Some believe that the foundation is selling its soul to the devil in this matter, even if the ultimate goal is very honorable. It’s true that Meta is not really known for its great protection of personal data…
Source: Mozilla