Google’s Matt Brittin: Good Privacy Makes for Good Advertising

It’s a curious time to be speaking with Matt Brittin about web privacy. Google’s president of EMEA Business & Operations is keen to affirm the importance of privacy for web users, and to share how the internet giant is finding ways to ensure that privacy and targeted advertising can co-exist. However, just days before we meet, the UK’s  newly-appointed minister for Digital Culture Media & Sport, Michelle Donellan, raised the prospect of abandoning GDPR (the European data privacy standards), criticising the rules as ‘limiting the potential of our businesses’. 

While the UK’s government is toying with the idea of rolling back privacy rules, Matt is on a mission to underline the importance of consistent, international standards - not least because Google’s own research has found that internet privacy is of growing importance to users and can have a huge impact on how consumers view brands.

From 2019 to today, Google has seen a 50% increase in searches for safe browsing. Google’s research has also found that a bad privacy experience has as severe an impact on brand trust as a data breach, which according to Matt, means that “people are more concerned than ever about privacy.”

“A bad privacy experience, you’re not going to recover from but equally what we found is good privacy experiences make people more likely to return to your brand and build a relationship with it,” he adds.

With that in mind, in May this year Google launched a new tool, My Ad Centre, which will allow users to manage how ads are personalised and targeted, and to take control around particularly sensitive topics like alcohol, gambling, pregnancy. 

The key for Google is to integrate privacy with targeted, personalised advertising. Building on this, Matt points to the Privacy Sandbox - an initiative that seeks to allow access to user information without infringing individual privacy, and indeed the phasing out of third party cookies at the end of 2023. 

Targeted advertising, he continues, is what keeps the web free and accessible - and allows Google to fund important support initiatives. For example, this year, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Google has been helping people get to safety using Google Maps, and by protecting local news organisations in Ukraine via Project Shield. It also allows Google to reach and give access to those who currently have no internet access at all. 

“We see people calling for a ban on targeted advertising, but targeted advertising has always funded the media,” Matt says, noting that the IAB has estimated tens of billions would be lost in ad revenue to content creators and publications. “So, badly targeted advertising is not really an option. A subscription model for the web doesn't really deliver on for everyone and it becomes a luxury good.”

For marketers looking to navigate the need to advertise with the privacy imperative, Matt has the following advice: be utterly clear on your first party data strategy and what information you’re asking of your users, and test and experiment with the privacy tools available. While there’s a lot to try, he suggests starting off with the Privacy Sandbox approach and consulting others in the industry. But ultimately, any business that relies on targeted advertising to drive revenue and growth will need to move to a privacy-safe way of working. He also says that agency networks have been investing in their data practices and working with Google to figure out how to ‘make data dance in a privacy-safe way’.

“Getting it right, our research shows, is a competitive advantage,” says Matt. “So I do think that good privacy makes for good advertising - making a good business.”

Indeed, he suggests that European and British businesses have something of a head start because of the experience of having to comply with GDPR.  From Matt’s perspective, greater consistency across borders is a net good, making it easier for businesses to work internationally.

“The more consistent standards are across geographies, the easier it is for a small business to comply,” says Matt, who reckons that patchwork regulations block a ‘route to scale’ and may be indicative as to why there is no ‘European Google’ equivalent. 

“Whenever I'm in Brussels, I'm always making the case for a digital single market, completing that so that you've got one rule for everybody - GDPR started to do that, and there are other rules coming in. What I’d say to folks in the UK is that it’s worth really thinking about the standards that you want to set, and what we're there to achieve. I think UK consumers would want and expect tighter standards of privacy, because those standards sort of based on our culture and values. And, I think - and Google believes - that it's possible to have high standards of privacy and innovation… As such, I believe it's a really important discussion for policymakers to have. I would say ‘no compromising on privacy standards’, because ultimately, the web is nothing if people don't go there. They need to feel safe.”

With GDPR, Matt says Europe has taken the lead on rolling out not only a consistent rulebook, but one that aligns with Google’s own principles. Indeed, Google’s Safety Engineering Centre, which builds account controls for users globally, is based in Germany, ‘so the high bar that they set on personal data and privacy is there’.

It’s clear that for Google, this is an ongoing and evolving project. It will continue to fine tune its tools and procedures in order to ensure that privacy and targeted advertising are not mutually exclusive.

“I think [it’s a] pivotal moment,” says Matt. “We're actually optimistic about getting to a web that is privacy safe and still is open and affordable for everyone, but can also fund the kind of work that you will do [journalists and media platforms]. But we're on that journey.”