Google Chrome IP Masking Could Impact Search Advertising

A celebration for the Search Engine and a nightmare for everyone else.

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

Google is working on a two-hop proxy to improve Chrome users’ privacy. This development has three significant ramifications for advertisers:

• You will only be able to target regions that Google has designated for ad location targeting, and these regions won’t be precise.
• Google Chrome will conceal users’ identities by using a proxy to access to websites, making it impossible for marketers to tell the difference between real and automated traffic, oh Google and privacy they just love us so much don’t they?
• Google is gathering more location-specific data that is uniquely valuable, which may result in higher advertising prices.

Since Chrome is the only browser that supports the two-hop proxy, Google will have exclusive access to this data. There will be no data available for advertisers to use for location targeting on any other search engines. This might put an end to competition in the search ad market.

A wide range of services within proxied third-party traffic use IP-based geolocation to adhere to local laws and regulations and provide users with informative content. Use cases include geo-targeting for…