Attribution Reporting API
WarningThis API is being deprecated, although Google said they would continue work on a similar proposal through the web standards process, see the official announcement and this status overview from Google.
Overview
Ad conversion measurement often relies on third-party cookies. Browsers are restricting access to third-party cookies because these can be used to track users across sites and hinder user privacy. The Attribution Reporting API enables those measurements in a privacy-preserving way, without third-party cookies. This API enables advertisers and ad tech providers to measure conversions in the following cases:
- Ad clicks and views.
- Ads in a third-party iframe, such as ads on a publisher site that uses a third-party ad tech provider.
- Ads in a first-party context, such as ads on a social network or a search engine results page, or a publisher serving their own ads.
How does it work?
The developer guide provides a list of use cases which covers: (a) Event-level reports associate a particular event on the ad side (a click, view or touch) with coarse conversion data. To preserve user privacy, conversion-side data is coarse, and noise is added to the reports that are not sent immediately. The number of conversions is also limited. (b) Summary reports provide a mechanism for rich metadata to be reported in aggregate, to better support use-cases such as campaign-level performance reporting or conversion values.