Google is reportedly testing a new way of measuring a mobile audience, letting advertisers target users across apps and the mobile web.
Citing ‘people familiar with the matter’, Ad Age reports that Google’s new system connects the separate tracking mechanisms that follow what people do on the mobile web and in mobile apps respectively.
The move could save advertisers money by cutting down on duplication. Until now, advertisers have usually been forced to treat individual mobile users as two unconnected people, depending on whether they are using a mobile browser or apps.
AdAge reports that Google has reached out to several ad tech firms to start testing its new ad-targeting technology which marries the tracking capabilities that trace user actions on the mobile web (via Google’s network of third-party publishers) and within mobile apps (on Google’s mobile app advertising network, AdMob).
A Google spokesperson confirmed the test with AdAge, “As an alternative to less transparent methods, we’re doing some tests to help businesses run consistent ad campaigns across a device’s mobile browser and mobile apps, using existing anonymous identifiers, while enabling people to use the established privacy controls on Android and iOS.”
This technology is not the cookie-replacement Google is said to be working on, according to AdAge. “Instead Google is taking the cookie dropped in a mobile web browser and connecting it with the mobile app equivalent of a cookie.”
Advertisers will be able to target users as they migrate between mobile web sites and mobile apps on their devices. What the solution does not offer is a way to track users as the move between devices.
Last year, Google launched estimated-cross device conversions that treats users signed-in to the companies Chrome browser as a proxy for understanding cross-device habits.
AdAge reports that Google executives have expressed confidence that the new solution is more reliable and offers wider targeting coverage than the existing use of cookies.
The targeting method relies on Google’s two-million-plus network of third-party sites and its mobile app ad networkAdMob, which is able to track and serve ads to users of hundreds of thousands of mobile apps across Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android mobile operating systems.