3 ms·

"Advertising or behavioral tracking cookies" Any real business needs to do behavioral tracking for campaign conversions, add-to-cart, customer acquisition, fun

by tonymet 10mo ago

"Advertising or behavioral tracking cookies" Any real business needs to do behavioral tracking for campaign conversions, add-to-cart, customer acquisition, funneling, retention, personalization, etc. I love how we all hate cookie banners and say they are unnecessary, but are salaries are all paid by apps that do behavioral tracking. Only hobby blogs can get by without it.

carlosjobim 10mo ago
You can track conversions exactly without using analytics or cookies, by using promotion codes.
- tonymet 10mo ago
  "you can" and no one does.
  - bflesch 10mo ago
    It is very convenient when you can point to others for moral absolution when the victims are invisible to you.
    - tonymet 10mo ago
      I’m describing what people are doing .
  - carlosjobim 10mo ago
    It's not that uncommon. It's a completely reliable solution to the problem of attributing sales and knowing how much each advertising channel generate individually in sales. But taking into account that almost all jobs in advertising depend on keeping it "a mystery", it's no surprise that relatively few companies do it. After all, it looks better if you tell your boss or your customer that they had 40 000 "impressions" thanks to your campaign, rather than 400 definite sales.
Hnrobert42 10mo ago
I appreciate the list of reasons to cookies are useful. Despite having worked in technology for 25 years, I couldn't have articulated that list off the top of my head. I have never worked for a website that made money that way. I think that means not ALL websites need invasive tracking.
- tonymet 10mo ago
  can you give examples of serious online businesses that are not doing those things? Here are the industries that I've worked in that all did behavioral tracking for the above applications * gaming * music industry * healthcare * social media * news * internet search * online retail
  - bflesch 10mo ago
    You don't seem to understand that one can do behavioral tracking without sharing all personal data with Facebook and Google. GDPR is mainly focused on who you share the data with. Performance tracking of core business processess including traffic sources can be done without involvement of Facebook and Google. It's totally legit to spend a career helping the folks at Facebook and Google to soak up more private information about everyone so the Trump campaign can improve targeting of the fake news advertisements for the presidential election campaigns. But it is not ethical.
    - tonymet 10mo ago
      No thats not true
      - Nextgrid 10mo ago
        Disagreed. You can absolutely do all analytics, personalization and marketing in-house on your properties. You only need data sharing if you want to influence advertising on other properties or if you display others' ads on yours. Whether you want to do so is a different matter. This obviously requires (potentially custom) software and infrastructure, vs throwing in GTM and calling it a day. If there is no regulatory reason for it (there isn't - this aspect of the GDPR is not enforced), most businesses won't bother and will take the easy option.
blibble 10mo ago
you don't need a banner for shopping carts, or personalisation the heuristic for whether you need the banner is essentially: is the user deriving the benefit, or just the operator? if it's the latter you definitely need the banner
- tbrownaw 10mo ago
  > the heuristic for whether you need the banner is essentially: is the user deriving the benefit, or just the operator? This is just as bogus as the user vs developer distinction in copyleft world. Of course users benefit from the operator knowing if their design decisions are actually on the right track.
  - blibble 10mo ago
    how does the user browsing the site right now benefit from activity tracking? the specific user right now, not a hypothetical user at some point in the future (if the business continues to exist) answer: they don't
    - bflesch 10mo ago
      They need to tell themselves that "data privacy" is a non-issue because otherwise they would have to take responsibility for feeding Facebook/Google all of their users for many years, which directly resulted in fake news laced political advertisements which micro-targeted voters in the presidential elections. The book "careless people" clearly documents how Facebook engineers were embedded in the Trump campaign to run fake news advertisements micro-targeted to US voters. It takes a lot of strength to resolve such a fundamental cognitive dissonance, especially if your self image is the talented techie who made money without hurting anyone.
Nextgrid 10mo ago
It's a shame this is downvoted. It doesn't make it right, but it is true. Until the regulation actually gets enforced so that everyone is on a level playing field and does not do such things, you will be at a disadvantage if you're the only one to comply, so the winning strategy is to not comply and engage in such practices just like your competitors do.
- tonymet 10mo ago
  I wish I had a nickel for all the downvotes I’ve earned for describing things as they are
  - tonymet 10mo ago
    how meta
- Dylan16807 10mo ago
  > you will be at a disadvantage if you're the only one to comply, so the winning strategy is to not comply "need" is the wrong word for this. And the comment doesn't talk about it as a prisoner's dilemma, it says "need" unconditionally. The downvotes are not sad.
sceptic123 10mo ago
There's no _need_ to use cookies for tracking purposes though, it's usually just easier/cheaper/quicker (or requested by the marketing department) to use off the shelf software than actually spend the time to implement these things. But if you have a cart, you need a cookie banner regardless of any tracking you are doing.
- tonymet 10mo ago
  Even the biggest tech companies, with surplus engineering resources, do third party integrations. "easier / cheaper / quicker" means that will be the solution . You can't tell your boss "let's spend more money, more time, more risk" on getting it done.

by tonymet 10mo ago

carlosjobim 10mo ago

You can track conversions exactly without using analytics or cookies, by using promotion codes.

tonymet 10mo ago
"you can" and no one does.
- bflesch 10mo ago
  It is very convenient when you can point to others for moral absolution when the victims are invisible to you.
  - tonymet 10mo ago
    I’m describing what people are doing .
- carlosjobim 10mo ago
  It's not that uncommon. It's a completely reliable solution to the problem of attributing sales and knowing how much each advertising channel generate individually in sales. But taking into account that almost all jobs in advertising depend on keeping it "a mystery", it's no surprise that relatively few companies do it. After all, it looks better if you tell your boss or your customer that they had 40 000 "impressions" thanks to your campaign, rather than 400 definite sales.

Hnrobert42 10mo ago

I appreciate the list of reasons to cookies are useful. Despite having worked in technology for 25 years, I couldn't have articulated that list off the top of my head. I have never worked for a website that made money that way. I think that means not ALL websites need invasive tracking.

tonymet 10mo ago
can you give examples of serious online businesses that are not doing those things? Here are the industries that I've worked in that all did behavioral tracking for the above applications * gaming * music industry * healthcare * social media * news * internet search * online retail
- bflesch 10mo ago
  You don't seem to understand that one can do behavioral tracking without sharing all personal data with Facebook and Google. GDPR is mainly focused on who you share the data with. Performance tracking of core business processess including traffic sources can be done without involvement of Facebook and Google. It's totally legit to spend a career helping the folks at Facebook and Google to soak up more private information about everyone so the Trump campaign can improve targeting of the fake news advertisements for the presidential election campaigns. But it is not ethical.
  - tonymet 10mo ago
    No thats not true
    - Nextgrid 10mo ago
      Disagreed. You can absolutely do all analytics, personalization and marketing in-house on your properties. You only need data sharing if you want to influence advertising on other properties or if you display others' ads on yours. Whether you want to do so is a different matter. This obviously requires (potentially custom) software and infrastructure, vs throwing in GTM and calling it a day. If there is no regulatory reason for it (there isn't - this aspect of the GDPR is not enforced), most businesses won't bother and will take the easy option.

blibble 10mo ago

you don't need a banner for shopping carts, or personalisation the heuristic for whether you need the banner is essentially: is the user deriving the benefit, or just the operator? if it's the latter you definitely need the banner

tbrownaw 10mo ago
> the heuristic for whether you need the banner is essentially: is the user deriving the benefit, or just the operator? This is just as bogus as the user vs developer distinction in copyleft world. Of course users benefit from the operator knowing if their design decisions are actually on the right track.
- blibble 10mo ago
  how does the user browsing the site right now benefit from activity tracking? the specific user right now, not a hypothetical user at some point in the future (if the business continues to exist) answer: they don't
  - bflesch 10mo ago
    They need to tell themselves that "data privacy" is a non-issue because otherwise they would have to take responsibility for feeding Facebook/Google all of their users for many years, which directly resulted in fake news laced political advertisements which micro-targeted voters in the presidential elections. The book "careless people" clearly documents how Facebook engineers were embedded in the Trump campaign to run fake news advertisements micro-targeted to US voters. It takes a lot of strength to resolve such a fundamental cognitive dissonance, especially if your self image is the talented techie who made money without hurting anyone.

Nextgrid 10mo ago

It's a shame this is downvoted. It doesn't make it right, but it is true. Until the regulation actually gets enforced so that everyone is on a level playing field and does not do such things, you will be at a disadvantage if you're the only one to comply, so the winning strategy is to not comply and engage in such practices just like your competitors do.

tonymet 10mo ago
I wish I had a nickel for all the downvotes I’ve earned for describing things as they are
- tonymet 10mo ago
  how meta
Dylan16807 10mo ago
> you will be at a disadvantage if you're the only one to comply, so the winning strategy is to not comply "need" is the wrong word for this. And the comment doesn't talk about it as a prisoner's dilemma, it says "need" unconditionally. The downvotes are not sad.

sceptic123 10mo ago

There's no _need_ to use cookies for tracking purposes though, it's usually just easier/cheaper/quicker (or requested by the marketing department) to use off the shelf software than actually spend the time to implement these things. But if you have a cart, you need a cookie banner regardless of any tracking you are doing.

tonymet 10mo ago
Even the biggest tech companies, with surplus engineering resources, do third party integrations. "easier / cheaper / quicker" means that will be the solution . You can't tell your boss "let's spend more money, more time, more risk" on getting it done.