eyeo launches Crumbs, bridging gap between privacy and identity

New solution provides mediation between what advertisers need and what users want

eyeo, the makers of Adblock Plus and pioneers in building a more sustainable value exchange between advertisers, publishers and online users, today unveils Crumbs, a revolutionary new approach to managing user data privately and a sustainable digital advertising alternative for the post-third-party cookie world.

Crumbs combines two different aspects of the online economy. On one end, it provides best-in-class privacy features at no monetary cost to the user. On the other, it gives advertisers a data-driven, holistic digital advertising solution, bridging the value exchange between content and consumer, while also being fully compatible with programmatic bidding and private by design. Crumbs differs from other industry approaches to handling users’ data for advertising purposes in that it encourages users’ endorsement by empowering them with tangible tools that help indicate their explicit preferences in a data-driven advertising environment, while maintaining their complete anonymity.

Rotem Dar, Director of Media Operations at eyeo, discusses more: “Apart from ‘pandemic’, ‘privacy’ was the most important word in digital advertising in 2020. Increasing consumer understanding of how data is being shared for advertising purposes, legislation like GDPR and CCPA, among others, as well as moves by browser makers to depreciate third-party tracking cookies created a new reality: the privacy-focused web. Advertising technologies must adapt to this new, more private world.”

Users’ browsing data remains safe on their devices and their online identity and individuality are protected from cross-site matching, thus fulfilling the spirit of privacy legislation by allowing users to control how their data is being collected and used.

Nonetheless, Crumbs supports the monetised web and especially content creators by making anonymised yet broad data sharing that complies with common targeting scenarios. Advertisers are then able to benefit from access to more accurate data about their audiences, generated in the user’s device, while maintaining complete user anonymity, which will increase trust in the advertising ecosystem.

Crumbs also serves as a technology layer and a framework for browsers, which supports the privacy-focused web ecosystem by providing a comprehensive, easy-to-use and free suite of the most effective privacy protection tools available. This encourages a two-track process: facilitating an added level of support to advertisers and content creators, while also addressing the user side of privacy.

Dar continued: “Key to this new reality is that targeting simply will not work if users are not involved. There needs to be a solution that guarantees a ‘new deal’ between users, websites and advertisers; this is why we have developed Crumbs. For a thriving free web and notably journalism, availability of marketing data is crucial. While websites can benefit from their first party data, that is not enough for ensuring free speech for long term. We wish to provide users with greater transparency and control over how their personal data is being used online, also in aim to restore their trust in online advertising. Not only does Crumbs protect user privacy, ensuring no one can profile you as an individual, it also still provides advertisers with rich insights into their audiences, thus promoting fair, transparent and sustainable online advertising. It is truly a win/win in creating a more balanced value exchange between consumers and advertisers.

“At eyeo, we have been intimately involved in helping the market find a way to bring ad-blocking users back to the value chain of advertisers and publishers. Through Crumbs, we are now aspiring to provide the framework for a joint solution that mediates between browsing technologies, advertisers’ needs and users’ desires, extending our mission of creating a fair and profitable web for all parties. By offering users the ability to support targeting scenarios that enrich their advertising experience and help fund their visited sites, while essentially enabling functionality of a consistent identity throughout the customer journey, Crumbs truly offers the best of all worlds.”

Users can download Crumbs today for desktop – https://crumbs.org/
Here is the vision paper on which the product is based – https://gitlab.com/eyeo/lab/spectacle

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About eyeo
eyeo was created in 2011 with the mission to put users in control of a fair, profitable web. Over the years eyeo has developed respectful, user-friendly and sustainable solutions for the future of the web. The most well-known example of this is Acceptable Ads, a program that establishes a common ground between ad-blocking users, websites and advertisers. Now available to over 200 million users, Acceptable Ads has expanded from extensions and plug-ins to be a sought-after feature on a number of browsers and platforms. In addition to that, eyeo develops Flattr, a donation tool for content creators, as well as Crumbs, a tool that mitigates consumers’ desire for privacy control and advertisers’ need to understand an addressable audience.

For more information, please visit eyeo.com/en/press

Press contacts
Connor O’Keefe/ Avinash Nandara
Spreckley
Email: eyeo@spreckley.co.uk
Tel: +44 (0)207 388 9988

Source: RealWire