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We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

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Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#41

Post by M2Ys4U »

treffer wrote: post #32
b2bsaas00 wrote: post #29

I have a campaign with a UTM link, once the user lands on our page we save this UTM as cookie and then we persist on our db at sign up. Is this complaint with GDPR and will it still possible in the future?

IANAL GDPR is about consent, not cookies, storage or anything. If you track a user then you need consents. Nothing about GDPR is tied to cookies. They are just one way to generate and keep PII (a tracking ID). Now if the UTM only identifies the source (user coming from X, FB, ...) and does not identify or reveal the user then you are probably fine. It should even be fine as a cookie, although there have been talks ab…

>GDPR is about consent

Consent is one of six different legal bases for processing personal data. Consent is important, yes, but it's not the be all and end all.

>It should even be fine as a cookie, although there have been talks about storing on a users device without consent

That will require consent, because the use of cookies is regulated not by the GDPR but by a different law (the ePrivacy Directive).

Under the ePrivacy Directive all cookies[0] that aren't strictly necessary to provide the service require consent.

[0] In fact it's even broader than cookies as the law covers storing any information on the user's device, so it includes things like the local storage API and indexed DB.

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#42

Post by bawolff »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #11
c0l0 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one number that should be of interest to anyone who's not a professional "growth marketer" is missing, though, don't you agree? I skimmed the whole article, read your posting, and even though I know some of these words, I still have no idea if the decision was hurtful to the business, or if it did not move the needle at all, or if it even was a net positive, all things considered.

> I still have no idea if the decision was hurtful to the business, or if it did not move the needle at all, or if it even was a net positive, all things considered It's incredibly hard to tell. For us the goal of eliminating Cookies was important given the stance we have on privacy so everything went from there. The folks working in marketing for sure were not happy with the directive as it makes their job much hard…

Well that's fair, i do feel a little let down by a lack of answer to "here's what happened" part of the headline, which largely went unanswered.

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#43

Post by masto »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #35
dewey wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trying to shove Google into my face Unless you always browse with the network inspector open I don't really see how that would be the case.

It is really not very complicated. It is actually very simple. When I visit a new website, I check what it requests using uBlock Origin. Then just block those unwanted stuff. If the website does not work without something like Google fonts or tag manager or whatever other bloat, it means, that it is shoddy-made, by an either uninformed or ignorant entity. It probably is illegal according to EU law as well, since I ne…

And other than being stressed and annoyed and having to fuss with a bunch of extra stuff to use the Internet, this makes your life better how?

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#44

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

bawolff wrote: post #42
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still have no idea if the decision was hurtful to the business, or if it did not move the needle at all, or if it even was a net positive, all things considered It's incredibly hard to tell. For us the goal of eliminating Cookies was important given the stance we have on privacy so everything went from there. The folks working in marketing for sure were not happy with the directive as it makes their job much hard…

Well that's fair, i do feel a little let down by a lack of answer to "here's what happened" part of the headline, which largely went unanswered.

Marketing budget went into marketing things. Results were in line with expectations :P

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#45

Post by potatoproduct »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #21
potatoproduct wrote: post #13

TLDR; Performance tanked. Targeting and optimisation dwindled, measurement became directional last click. They still switched to solutions that leverage IP Addresses. As they burned through their marketing budget, they focused on bogus metrics like dwelltimes and patted eachother on the back. Fun times ahead.

Great, so this’ll happen to all of em soon. Fuck people might have to talk to their users ;-)

As a user you'll probably find you get more clickbait, more ads, more paywalls, less access to high quailty content, etc as publishers scramble to survive. (Because the value of their ad inventory drops.)

And as marketing is less efficient, higher budgets are required to drive the same results. We can potentially expect to see these costs gradually passed on to the consumers and watch more businesses fail.

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#47

Post by rob74 »

potatoproduct wrote: post #13

TLDR; Performance tanked. Targeting and optimisation dwindled, measurement became directional last click. They still switched to solutions that leverage IP Addresses. As they burned through their marketing budget, they focused on bogus metrics like dwelltimes and patted eachother on the back. Fun times ahead.

You probably mean marketing performance? Because my first thought was "how on earth can removing ads and tracking be bad for site performance?!"

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#48

Post by justinclift »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #11
c0l0 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one number that should be of interest to anyone who's not a professional "growth marketer" is missing, though, don't you agree? I skimmed the whole article, read your posting, and even though I know some of these words, I still have no idea if the decision was hurtful to the business, or if it did not move the needle at all, or if it even was a net positive, all things considered.

> I still have no idea if the decision was hurtful to the business, or if it did not move the needle at all, or if it even was a net positive, all things considered It's incredibly hard to tell. For us the goal of eliminating Cookies was important given the stance we have on privacy so everything went from there. The folks working in marketing for sure were not happy with the directive as it makes their job much hard…

> It's incredibly hard to tell.

Heh, that's very much like the old "... and nothing of value was lost" then.

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#49

Post by isodev »

rob74 wrote: post #46
kosolam wrote: post #27

If anyone started reading and also got confused like me. Chrome change will affect third party cookies, not all cookies.

But even if you only use your own cookies, you will still have to show one of those annoying cookie banners first...

Only if you use the cookies to track users. Cookies like authentication and things needed by the website to work do not require the banner. And so I think Sentry did the right thing, one can go to sentry.io and browse without having this fugly banner to dismiss every time.

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#50

Post by bmacho »

rrr_oh_man wrote: post #12
zelphirkalt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is in the same league as advertising cookies. If I visit a website, I want to read or interact with that website, not with Google. Trying to shove Google into my face will meet the same reaction as trying to shove ads in my face. Getting blocked.

> Trying to shove Google into my face will meet the same reaction as trying to shove ads in my face. Getting blocked. You will have a hard time browsing the web, including this site ;)

> You will have a hard time browsing the web, including this site ;)

No, HN works even js disabled.

I did this experiment a while ago, blocking google in my hosts file. Usually fonts break (arrows, icons), and javascript breaks (reddit and stackoverflow need google ajax jquery to uncollapse collapsed messages).

But in general most of the web is usable.

In theory it should be possible to host fonts and jquery locally, but I wasn't able to manage that.

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