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I've repeatedly browsed AMP and non-AMP pages (without blocking as a normal user) - this is basically a total lie. The amount of crap on media pages (while the

I've repeatedly browsed AMP and non-AMP pages (without blocking as a normal user) - this is basically a total lie. The amount of crap on media pages (while they wail about privacy) is absolutely staggering. How many trackers do these folks need? I got to MSBNC - a place looking to take down this tracking panopticon system and they are shoving demdex taboola scorecardresearch tvpixel chartbeat sail-horizon condustrcts imrworldwide hotjar connect.facebook.net womanear.com mparticle.com etc. I mean, seriously - why not just use one (like google) and be done. Can anyone explain why the need so many beacons on a page?

wilde 5y ago
I interpreted this as the downside of competition in the ad network space. Similar to “why do we need 4 cell towers on the top of this building” or “why does Boston have so many hospitals”.
s_fischer 5y ago
The biggest reason is that google doesn't provide the utility that each of these individual libraries brings to the table. Even if they did, there's nothing that says the total "omega tracking bundle" that you'd be downloading from Google would be any smaller than the aggregated total of these libraries. You'd definitely have fewer network requests but I'm not sure that would really move the needle as much as you'd want. While there is probably a bit of overlap, many of the above tools have very different use cases. For example, chartbeat is commonly used more on the editorial side for writers to track article performance but imrworldwide is a subdomain own by Neilson that they use to serve their sdk which offers metrics for preroll video ads. Hotjar provides user heat maps but sail-horizon is part of sailthru and used for email marketing.