Google shared its plans to stop selling ads based on individual users' browsing behavior within Chrome. This big announcement, which came at the start of the month, is causing a stir in the advertising community because of how commonly marketers use this data to build their strategies.

The first hints of such a shift came back in August when Google announced their Privacy Sandbox initiative, which led to speculation over the implications for ads tailored to specific consumers and the ad community in general. While some see this as a win for consumer privacy, many competing companies are arguing that Google is using privacy concerns as a way to cement its own dominance and audience tracking is merely transforming – not going away. Either way, no real changes are rolling out until February 2022.