With the announcement of the launch of the first Beta for its "Privacy Sandbox," an adtech stack proposal that aims to iterate how ad tracking, targeting, and reporting is done so that it appears less creepy for individual users while maintaining an interest-based, behavioral targeting capability on web users' eyeballs, Google has begun letting Android developers kick the tires of its claimed reboot of ad-targeting.

As the adtech giant begins a gradual (but stated global) rollout of the beta, which will "expand over time," a "small percentage" of eligible Android 13 devices will enroll in the trial.

Tech Crunch's parent company Yahoo, mobile game developer Rovio, mobility company Wolt, cross-platform games engine Unity, and mobile marketing platforms AppsFlyer, InMobi Exchange, and Adjust are among the trial's advertising partners.

Google adds, "If your device is selected for the Beta, you’ll receive an Android notification letting you know." This suggests that Android users will opt in to the interest-based, experimental ad targeting.

According to Google, Android users in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the European Economic Area will be required to opt in to the program.

This suggests that users are opting in elsewhere in the world and will need to manually opt out if they do not want to participate in these interest-based ads tests

When Google made the so-called "Privacy Sandbox" proposal in 2019 to make ad tracking less harmful to individual web users' privacy (or, more specifically, to make its business less of a target for privacy backlash), it focused on its desktop-based Chrome browser and on ending the use of third-party tracking cookies online. 

New APIs in the Privacy Sandbox Beta don't use identifiers that can track your activity across apps and websites and are designed with privacy in mind. However, a year ago, it announced that it would extend the Sandbox approach to Android. Today, it is letting the first Android developers play with it. “Google's Anthony Chavez explains in the blog post that apps that choose to participate in the Beta can use these APIs to show you relevant ads and measure their effectiveness.”

The precise number of Android users who will be exposed to the experimental ad-targeting is unknown. or where these users will be located worldwide. Or how many people will be asked for their affirmative consent to participate in the trial, as opposed to being opted in and having to self-opt out through the settings if they don't want to?

You might be able to see, for instance, that Android has estimated your interest in movies and the outdoors, and you can block any topics that don't fit your interests.

In addition, if you decide not to participate in the Beta, you can turn it off or back on in the Settings menu.

Android users may have cause to question Google's approach to inferred interest-based ad targeting if they investigate these settings and discover that they have been assigned "topics" that they do not hold.

Since Google has stated that the Topics taxonomy will be "human curated" in order to prevent the inclusion of "sensitive" topics as "estimated interests," we can only hope that there won't be any worse surprises than that.

However, the ease with which proxies can be identified for sensitive topics (such as using a particular television show as a stand-in for political views) suggests that this may be rather naive. Also, depending on what they use their device for, users might want to think about whether others who have access to it might be able to see their generated interests. This could jeopardize their privacy.