> "unnecessary overlapping functionality" Luckily I didn't do much work with ad-supported publishing sites, but I still experienced some of that pain. It wasn

> "unnecessary overlapping functionality" Luckily I didn't do much work with ad-supported publishing sites, but I still experienced some of that pain. It wasn't unusual for a marketer to ask for 6 or more tracking/analytics scripts (that all claim to do the same thing). The scripts were usually archaic and baroque, and unable to handle common web patterns like Post-Redirect-Get or AJAX without worakarounds. They usually had lots of parameters so that you could specify exactly what data you wanted when an event happened... But for marketers who didn't really know what they were looking for, and therefore couldn't specify, the results were of course insufficient. So the natural solution was to add yet another 3rd-party script that promises to do magic. Of course, when you're talking about a database-backed web application whose very nature is to store data and do queries for reports, most of these scripts are obviously more than a little redundant. If the specs for the site included what needed to be tracked and what reports were needed, then the 3rd party scripts wouldn't be needed at all (except for the ones that track you across multiple sites or inject supercookies). But it's quicker and easier just to try adding more 3rd party snake oil.