Customize user experience for known customers

Use a Shared Storage worklet to identify known customers.

The Shared Storage API is a Privacy Sandbox proposal for general purpose, cross-site storage, which supports many possible use cases. One example is identifying known customers, which is available to test in Chrome 104.0.5086.0 and later.

You can store whether the user has registered on your site into Shared Storage, then render a separate element based on whether the user's stored status (is the user a "known" customer).

Set known customers

To experiment with identifying known customers in Shared Storage, confirm you're using Chrome 104.0.5086.0 or later. Enable all the Ad privacy APIs under chrome://settings/adPrivacy.

You can also enable Shared Storage with the --enable-features=PrivacySandboxAdsAPIsOverride,OverridePrivacySandboxSettingsLocalTesting,SharedStorageAPI,FencedFrames flag in the command line.

Experiment with code samples

You may want to render a different element based on whether the user was seen on a different site. For example, a payment provider may want to render a "Register" or "Buy now" button based on whether the user has registered at the payment provider's site. Shared storage can be used to set the user's status and customize their user experience based on that status.

In this example:

  • known-customer.js is embedded in a frame. This script sets the options for which button should be displayed on a site, "Register" or "Buy now."
  • known-customer-worklet.js is the shared storage worklet that determines if the user is known. If the user is known, the information is returned. If the user is unknown, that information is returned to display the "Register" button and the user is marked as known for the future.

known-customer.js

// The first URL for the "register" button is rendered for unknown users.
const BUTTON_URLS = [
  { url: `https://${advertiserUrl}/ads/register-button.html` },
  { url: `https://${advertiserUrl}/ads/buy-now-button.html` },
];

async function injectButton() {
  // Load the worklet module
  await window.sharedStorage.worklet.addModule('known-customer-worklet.js');

  // Set the initial status to unknown ('0' is unknown and '1' is known)
  window.sharedStorage.set('known-customer', 0, {
    ignoreIfPresent: true,
  });

  // Run the URL selection operation to choose the button based on the user status
  const fencedFrameConfig = await window.sharedStorage.selectURL('known-customer', BUTTON_URLS, {
    resolveToConfig: true
  });

  // Render the opaque URL into a fenced frame
  document.getElementById('button-slot').src = fencedFrameConfig;
}

injectButton();

known-customer-worklet.js

class SelectURLOperation {
  async run(urls) {
    const knownCustomer = await sharedStorage.get('known-customer');

    // '0' is unknown and '1' is known
    return parseInt(knownCustomer);
  }
}

register('known-customer', SelectURLOperation);

Use cases

These are only some of the possible use cases for Shared Storage. We'll continue to add examples as we receive feedback and discover new use cases.

Content selection

Select and display different content on different websites in fenced frames based on information collected in Shared Storage. The output gate for these use cases is URL selection.

  • Creative rotation: Store data, such as creative ID, view counts, and user interaction, to determine which creative users' see across different sites.
  • A/B testing: You can assign a user to an experiment group, then store that group in Shared Storage to be accessed cross-site.
  • Custom user experiences: Share custom content and calls-to-action based on a user's registration status or other user states

Generate summary reports

Collect information with Shared Storage and generated a noisy, aggregated summary report. The output gate for these use cases is the Private Aggregation API.

  • Unique reach measurement: Many content producers and advertisers want to know how many unique people saw their content. Use Shared Storage to record the first time a user saw your ad, embedded video, or publication, and prevent duplicative counting of that same user on different sites. You can then use the Private Aggregation API to output a summary report for your reach.
  • Demographics measurement: Content producers often want to understand the demographics of their audience. You can use Shared Storage to record user demographic data in a context where you have it, such as your first-party site, and use aggregated reporting to report on it across many other sites, such as embedded content.
  • K+ frequency measurement: Sometimes described as "effective frequency," there is often a minimum number views before a user will recognize or recall certain content (often in the context of advertisement views). You can use Shared Storage to build reports of unique users that have seen a piece of content at least K number of times.

Engage and share feedback

Note that the Shared Storage API proposal is under active discussion and development and therefore subject to change.

We're eager to hear your thoughts on the Shared Storage API.

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