What is the Attribution Reporting API?
The Privacy Sandbox initiative aims to create technologies that both preserve people’s privacy online and give companies and developers the tools to build thriving digital businesses, which keeps the web and apps open and accessible to everyone. The Privacy Sandbox is an ongoing initiative that combines ideas from across the industry into new proposals that are tested, commented on, and iterated.
One of the Privacy Sandbox proposals being tested in Android is called the Attribution Reporting API. Today, it's common for mobile attribution and measurement solutions to use cross-party user identifiers, such as Advertising ID. The Attribution Reporting API is designed to provide improved user privacy by removing reliance on cross-party user identifiers, and to support key use cases for attribution and conversion measurement across the web and apps.
How Ad Manager supports the Attribution Reporting API
When available, the GMA SDK will match user events like clicks or views to advertiser-defined triggers and then send event-level and aggregatable reports through the Attribution Reporting API. The Attribution Reporting API will be automatically enabled for publishers on GMA SDK 22.4.0 or higher.
In Q4 2023, Ad Manager began initial testing for the Attribution Reporting API globally on ad requests for a small percentage of traffic. This initial test is to validate that our systems are operating as designed.
As of April 2024, app-to-web measurement—when the user sees an ad in a mobile app, then converts in a mobile or app browser—is now supported by the GMA SDK on Ad Manager.
Publisher controls for the Attribution Reporting API
We're still working on the Ad Manager product plans and we welcome publisher feedback on the types of controls that would be helpful. In the meantime, publishers can choose to opt out of the Attribution Reporting API.
Opting out of the Attribution Reporting API
If you want to opt out of Ad Manager's testing of Android's Attribution Reporting API, see how to prevent the merging of permissions in Android's instructions.