On Tuesday, Nitin Gajria, managing director of Google Africa, said the search interest in private browsing increased in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

Mr Gajria said at the Africa Ads Privacy immersion for the press in Lagos that search in private browsing increased in Kenya by 110 per cent, Nigeria by 60 per cent and South Africa by 30 per cent.

He said such an increase was significant and beneficial to businesses in Africa, which would boost the economy.

Private browsing is a privacy feature in some web browsers. When operating in such a mode, the browser creates a temporary session that is isolated from the browser’s main session and user data.

According to him, Kenya is the 15th country in the world that searched most for private browsing in the last five years and the African country that searched most for the topic.

According to him, 2022 was the year Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria searched most for private browsing since 2012.

‘”Today, 66 per cent of the world is online. The advert-supported internet model has become a remarkable resource for humanity, putting an explosion of tools, information and content at our fingertips,” Mr Gajria explained. “As people manage more of their lives online, their concerns over how personal data is gathered, used, and shared have grown.”

He added that in the last five years, search interest in private browsing increased by +60 per cent in Nigeria, +30 per cent in South Africa, and+110 per cent in Kenya.

‘’Make no mistake, this is important for businesses in Africa to acknowledge and respond to,’’ he said.

According to him, people want great online experiences – delivered with the privacy they deserve, by brands they can trust.

He said that the impact of a negative privacy experience outweighs that of a positive one, so it would be hard to bring customers back once the damage is done.

Brian Crowler, a software engineer, gave an overview of why ads are necessary worldwide.

Mr Crowler said bad adverts were stopped from getting to the users in the first place.

According to him, from 2018 to 2021, millions of bad adverts have been removed, publishers terminated, and advert accounts suspended. He said that in 2018, 2.3 million bad adverts were removed, in 2019, 2.7 million bad adverts were removed, in 2022, 3.1 billion and in 2021, 5.7 billion bad adverts were removed.

(NAN)