Navigating consent and server-side tracking

As the combined impact of a heightened focus on privacy begins to really impact marketers, the need to navigate the tracking consent maze is more important than ever. With rising concerns about user frustration towards cookie consent, and discussions around the value of Server-Side Tracking, there’s a lot to explore to fully understand how best to ready yourself amid the rising importance of user privacy.

Here we take a look at the background to some of the privacy changes taking place and provide some pointers to guide your decision-making on this as we consider: 

  • The drivers behind the increasing importance of user privacy online
  • Why there is an increased need for cookie consent and increasing user frustration with it
  • The impact of Privacy-Enabled Browsers and Ad Blockers
  • How Server-Side Tracking only tracks part of the journey.
  • How to bypass consent-related issues with Corvidae

The increasing importance of user privacy online 

Before we dig into the details around cookie consent, and the merits or otherwise of Server-Side Tracking, let’s set some context around privacy which is a key driver in all of this.  

One of the topics that has dominated the digital marketing space in recent years is the increasing need for user privacy online.  

A combination of individual user concerns about privacy, a wave of pressure from privacy activists and a coalition of global regulators – which are increasingly willing to flex their muscles – has ensured that privacy has top billing with consumers and marketers alike.  

All the evidence is that this is long overdue with 48% of consumers saying that they don’t trust tech companies handling their data right now and which is clearly affecting tracking consent, and 81% saying that the risks of data collection by companies outweighs the benefits. Tech giants come in for particularly harsh scrutiny in the space, as shown by research from the AIC polls which show Facebook, Amazon and Google experiencing significant falls in user confidence since 2018. 

Source: Brookings 

The knock-on effect of this has been marked. It includes not only changes in the privacy stance of major players, but also a tightening of privacy legislation (think GDPR and CCPA for example) as increasing efforts are made to protect Personal Identifying Information (PII). 

All of this has had fairly serious consequences for the way marketers are legally able to track and measure advertising activity. With stricter consent requirements at the heart of the balancing act between ensuring regulatory compliance and maximising audience reach. 

More need for cookie consent and increasing user frustration 

Against this privacy-centric backdrop, marketers are increasingly looking to leverage the value of their first-party data, in an effort to continue to deliver highly personalised advertising to their target audience.   

Getting appropriate cookie and tracking consent is key to making that work as marketers aim to stay on the right side of privacy rules. The advent of privacy-focused legislation like GDPR (and others like CCPA) has led marketers to increasingly ask for a range of consents, often repeatedly at different stages of the same customer journey.  

This is creating frustrations for users – with 72% of young consumers and 56% of older consumers expressing exasperation and dissatisfaction with web consent pop-ups according to research by The Exchange Lab and Populus.  

Part of the problem may lie in the increasingly detailed and granular consents required by companies to keep on the right side of legislation which, in turn, makes the process of navigating them quickly more difficult.  But it is also likely that poorly thought-through consent journeys and low-quality UX are contributing factors too.  

In fact, it is exactly these types of issues that have led to regulators across Europe – including ICO in the UK and CNIL in France – issuing warnings to website owners that consent options need to be clear or these owners risk censure like the 5 million Euro fine handed out to TikTok.  

The reality is that attitudes to cookie consent differ depending on a range of factors including user age group and geographical location as shown in the research below by YouGov. .  

Source: YouGov 

Interestingly, more users in the US (42%) indicated they don’t always accept cookies on websites versus the 32% that did.  

Without consent from those 42% of users, it means marketers are not in a position to track and target them with advertising, at least with traditional analytics tools anyway. 

Impact of Privacy-Enhanced Browsers and Ad Blockers 

So challenges with cookie consent, and user buy-in for tracking on the front end, have implications for your ability to target and track user journeys effectively.  

But other practical impediments can obscure key parts of the customer journey from your data view including:  

The rise of Privacy-Enhanced Browsers  

Browsers like Safari (Apple) and Firefox (Mozilla) blockedthe use of third-party cookies several years back, and these Privacy Enhanced Browsers are increasingly impacting the tracking and measurement landscape by:  

  • Restricting the personal and behavioural data that can be collected for targeting purposes 
  • Introducing new attribution challenges for marketers looking to track cross-site customer journeys in a privacy-friendly way  
  • Driving brands to make the most of their first-party data – through techniques like Server-Side Tracking – as the behavioural data associated with third-party cookies begin to disappear 

The use of Ad-Blockers  

Digital marketing has always created a delicate balance between users wanting to protect their personal data and the commercial imperative from advertisers who want to continue to be free to target them with advertising for their products and services.  

The reality is that many users are taking privacy into their own hands with 32.8% of them deploying Ad-Blockers at least sometimes when online according to GWI. Ad-Blockers are typically web browser plug-ins or applications that seek out advertising-related scripts and exclude them from the page for the user.  

Unfortunately for advertisers, this type of approach makes it harder for advertisers to plan, track and measure the effectiveness of their ad campaigns, which further reduces the audience pool that the advertisers can reach and has a knock-on effect on advertising revenues.

Server-Side Tracking only tracks part of the journey  

In an environment where user privacy is paramount, many marketers are turning to Server-Side Tracking as a privacy-focused solution – particularly as client-side tracking is becoming increasingly challenging due to the privacy concerns and browser restrictions outlined above.  

This approach is an alternative to Client-Side Tracking and the best way to explain the difference is visually – here we are showing Client-Side Tracking on the left and Server-Side Tracking on the right.  

  Source: Google 

Now, exploring the technical complexity of the respective solutions is outwith the scope of this blog (head over to the Google site for the details) but Server-Side Tracking does have some benefits including:  

  • Shifts gathering data from the client browser to the server and effectively creates a buffer between your website and third-party services 
  • Can overcome some of the issues with Ad-Blockers and Privacy-Centric Browsers.
  • Provides additional control over user’s personal data by limiting third-party access to data

All this sounds good  – and ticks the privacy and consent boxes required. However, we want to sound two notes of caution for marketers who are using Server-Side Tracking, in conjunction with cookie-based analytics solutions like Google Analytics.  

Firstly, one of the big limitations of this approach is that it only enables you to track part of the user journey. Typically, towards the end of the journey which disconnects conversion from touchpoints earlier in the journey (in this case pre-site interactions) that are valuable and contribute to conversion.  

As you can see, in a cookie-enabled solution like GA (the lower journey shown above) upper funnel touchpoints are lost due to limitations in the cookie-driven solution. While using our AI-driven solution (the top journey shown above), which does not rely on cookies, it is possible to track the impact of advertising touchpoints

Secondly, it is also worth mentioning that there are concerns around Server-Side Tracking approaches that use Google Consent mode and whether it actually fully meets privacy and consent requirements under legislation such as GDPR.  

Bypassing consent-related issues with Corvidae 

If you are wrestling with issues of privacy and consent and trying to solve your tracking and measurement issues with standard cookie-enabled solutions like GA and Adobe, now might be the time to think out of the box.  

Corvidae, is our AI-driven attribution solution which: 

  • takes privacy concerns away by bypassing cookie banners and avoiding the collection of PII (Personal Identifiable Information) 
  • enables you to leverage a solution that is privacy-first with no need to identify the user at any point  
  • provides comprehensive insight into the impact of your marketing activity right across the customer journey while prioritising privacy 

Why not request a demo with one of our experts today?