Google has begun the beta test for Privacy Sandbox for Android, its new environment for privacy-safe advertising on mobile devices.

The beta is beginning with a select portion of users on Android 13 devices, who will receive a notification letting them know they have been selected. They will then have a Privacy Sandbox settings menu available to them, from where they can choose whether or not to participate in the beta, as well as see which interests Google has estimated a user has and potentially block ads from that category.

Announced roughly one year ago, Privacy Sandbox for Android is reminiscent of Apple’s ATT, which gave users more control over how their data was shared between apps and had a major impact on the ad revenues at companies like Meta and Snap.

Google has said that Privacy Sandbox will still allow for relevant, targeted ads, though without cross-app identifiers. It will instead use Topics and FLEDGE – technology that also underpins the company’s post-cookie targeting capabilities for its Chrome browser – as well as Advertising ID, a resetable ID system. Advertising ID will also be a major part of the Attribution Reporting APIs that will provide measurement capabilities within the Privacy Sandbox environment.

Only apps that have thus far chosen to participate in the beta themselves will use the Privacy Sandbox APIs to target and measure ads.

“Our goal with the Privacy Sandbox is to enhance user privacy while providing businesses with the tools to succeed online,” Anthony Chavez, VP of Privacy Sandbox at Google, wrote in a company blog post. “Blunt approaches that don’t provide viable alternatives harm app developers, and they don’t work for user privacy either, leading to less private ways of tracking users like device fingerprinting. This is why we’re working with the Android ecosystem to build solutions that protect users and work for developers.”

Google says it has developed Privacy Sandbox for Android based on feedback from “hundreds” of companies. The listing of participants on Google’s website are mostly from the hardware, adtech and martech worlds, such as Samsung, Adobe, Outbrain, Adjust and Criteo, though it also includes the likes of Yahoo and Unity.