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With many browsers blocking the use of third-party cookies, first-party cookies offer a privacy-first way for publishers and advertisers to create more relevant and engaging experiences for people who engage with their sites or apps. Large publishers with signed-in user bases and dedicated resources often use these identifiers to personalize people’s content and ads. However, not all publishers have these capabilities. That’s why in November, we’ll expand the functionality of publisher first-party cookies from Google Ad Manager and AdSense beyond frequency management, fraud prevention and creative rotation to support ads personalization. This update will help publishers of all sizes easily serve personalized ads and potentially increase the value of their inventory in browsers where third-party cookies aren’t available — all while protecting people’s privacy.

Publisher first-party cookies for ads personalization

Next month, publishers who have first-party cookies enabled will be able to serve personalized ads with minimal technical effort. Here’s how it works. When a publisher allows, Google uses publisher first-party cookies to improve ad relevance on that specific publisher’s website by using information from ad interactions users took on the same site. These first party cookies are used by Google Ads and Display & Video 360 to create aggregated audiences to help advertisers reach their desired customers in browsers where third-party cookies aren’t available.

Publisher first-party cookies cannot be used to track users across the web. They are scoped per publisher, are not shared with other publishers, can’t be joined with any other identifiers and are subject to user consent. When publisher first-party cookies are enabled for ads personalization, ads are shown based exclusively on people’s behavior on a single publisher’s website. Publisher first-party cookies also respect people’s ads personalization preferences as indicated through the AdChoices controls.

As digital ads evolve to meet people’s changing privacy expectations, we’re working on new ways to make it easier for publishers and content creators of all sizes to continue to thrive. For more information or to get started with publisher first-party cookies visit the Google Ad Manager and AdSense product support centers.

Every year, National Coming Out Day (NCOD) is on October 11. We’ve made enormous strides for equality and acceptance since the inception of NCOD 34 years ago. Yet even in 2022, sharing one’s sexuality and gender identity can be a challenge for many members of the LGBTQ+ global community for a variety of cultural, political, religious and personal reasons. In many parts of the world, coming out continues to be a deeply courageous act of LGBTQ+ activism.

Be it in one’s community or in the workplace, coming out is the first step to living authentically and having pride in one’s identity. Google is committed to creating a culture of inclusion that supports all of our employees around the world, including members of the LGBTQ+ community – no matter how they identify.

A key part of creating a workplace that recognizes and celebrates diversity is offering a platform where people can share stories about their personal experiences and truths. We want to extend an enormous thanks to the four Googlers who have opened up to share their stories for this year’s National Coming Out Day. These stories represent just a small fraction of Google’s diverse and vibrant LGBTQ+ community.

“Coming in” before coming out

Jean Illyria (she/her), who works in our Singapore office with Google Customer Solutions, says she first used technology to come out as a trans woman. “If you’ve ever played a role-playing game, you’d know how it feels to experience the world through this third-person view, responding to events and making decisions for your virtual character based on a story you’ve crafted for them,” she says. “The experiences you have are real, the emotions you feel may be real, but it’s all very much unreal. My life felt like a game, so naturally, I first came out while chatting in a game. The anonymity and the appearance of my virtual person seemed to make it much easier.”

Ever since surrounding herself with people who accept and support her, Jean has been able to focus on living life to the fullest. “Coming out may seem like a huge milestone and a rite of passage for LGBT folks, but don’t come out just for the sake of coming out,” she says. “Instead, focus on what coming out would do for you, and consider the costs and benefits of doing so for your individual situation. Start by prioritizing what’s been dubbed as ‘coming in’: Learn to accept, embrace and celebrate your identity for yourself.”

Coming out at work

California-based Googler Marnie Florin (any gender-neutral pronouns, such as they/them and ze/zir), who works in people operations, first came out as queer and then as nonbinary. Because Marnie uses gender-neutral pronouns, they need to come out to every new person they meet to avoid being misgendered. For Marnie and many nonbinary people, being misgendered is painful; it pulls them out from what they’re doing and creates feelings of disconnection and rejection simply because of who they are. This is especially taxing when working at a large company, which is just one example of why allyship is so important.

It took two months for Marnie to come out when they joined Google in 2014. “I agonized over how to do it: Should I tell everyone in person, should I have my manager do it, should I let people find out organically? Ultimately, I decided to send an email to my larger team and the responses were so incredible,” they say. “It was so freeing to stop hiding such a significant part of my identity. I’m a better employee, teammate, and manager because I can be my authentic self at work.”

Deciding when the time is right

Working in London, Nayem Chowdhury (he/him) is from a traditional Muslim immigrant family and worried about coming out. He says he spent so much energy hiding his true self — energy he believed he could otherwise spend enjoying life.

“It’s particularly hard to manage different levels of authenticity at work and in your personal life, so it was very liberating to come out at Google,” he says. “In fact, I was out at work first. It’s given me access to so many amazing people and opportunities through LGBTQ+ employee resource groups, and it gave me the confidence to come out to my parents.”

Nayem says it’s crucial people come out only when the time is right for them, and not feel pressured to do so. “Go at your own pace and do it your own way,” he says. “I regret not coming out to my parents sooner as I thought I had to do it face-to-face, but I kept putting it off. I eventually did it over email, which suited me much better.”

Being an example to others

Googler Guilherme Saconatto (he/him), who works in Brazil as an account executive, said he didn’t know just how much he yearned for community and felt like he was compartmentalizing his identity before coming out. “Before coming out, you don’t realize how lonely you are with your secret,” he says. But when he came out to his close friends and they were supportive, he says, “It felt like being welcomed into a new world.”

Guilherme says coming out doesn’t just affect an individual — it impacts the LGBTQ+ community around the world. “There is nothing more freeing and rewarding than being able to remain faithful to ourselves at all times,” he says. “The queer community needs our heroes and role models visible to allow ourselves to aspire to reach higher. Visibility is still one of the most powerful tools in changing society.”

In Lamwo district, in northern Uganda, providing access to electricity is a challenge. In a country where only about 24% of the population has a power supply to their home from the national grid, the rate in Lamwo is even lower. This is partly due to lack of information: The government doesn’t have precise data about where settlements are located, what types of buildings there are, and what the buildings’ electricity needs might be. And canvassing the area isn’t practical, because the roads require four-wheel-drive vehicles and are impassable in the rain.

Ernest Mwebaze leads Sunbird AI, a Ugandan nonprofit that uses data technology for social good. They’re assessing areas in Lamwo district to support planning at the Ministry of Energy in Uganda. “There are large areas to plan for,” explains Ernest. “Even when you’re there on the ground, it’s difficult to get an overall sense of where all the buildings are and what is the size of each settlement. Currently people have to walk long distances just to charge their phones.”

To help with their analysis, Ernest’s team have been using Google’s Open Buildings. An open-access dataset project based on satellite imagery pinpointing the locations and geometry of buildings across Africa, Open Buildings allows the team to study the electrification needs, and potential solutions, at a level of detail that was previously impossible.

Our research center in Ghana led the development of the Open Buildings project to support policy planning for the areas in the world with the biggest information gaps. We created it by applying artificial intelligence methods to satellite imagery to identify the locations and outlines of buildings.

Since we released the data, we’ve heard from many organizations — including UN agencies, nonprofits and academics — who have been using it:

• The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, has been using Open Buildings for survey sampling. It’s common to do household surveys in regions where people have been displaced, in order to know what people need. But UNHCR needs to first have an assessment of where the households actually are, which is where the Open Buildings project has been useful.
• UN Habitat is using Open Buildings to study urbanization across the African continent. Having detail on the way that cities are laid out enables them to make recommendations on urban planning.
• The International Energy Agency is using Open Buildings to estimate energy needs. With data about individual buildings, they can assess the needs of communities at a new level of precision and know how much energy is needed for cooking, lighting and for operating machinery. This will help with planning sustainable energy policy.

We’re excited to make this information available in more countries and to assist more organizations in their essential work. As Ernest says, “By providing decision makers with better data, they can make better decisions. Geographical data is particularly important for providing an unbiased source of information for planning basic services, and we need more of it.”