Thursday 9th December: Cookie compliance efforts still falling short

December 09, 2021

Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Esther.

In news that will shock absolutely none of you, a new study has shown that publishers are more often than not ignoring user consent. Not intentionally - we hope - but the picture is quite complicated.

The investigation by Ebiquity found that 92.6% of websites that attract tier-one advertiser-spend place at least one tracker on internet users’ devices prior to gaining their consent. Of the 200,000 cookies analysed, half were defined as “marketing cookies” by the CMP with 82.4% of these tracking tools determined to have been installed on users’ devices by third parties. A third of those cookies were fired without valid user consent.

Whether its advertisers pixeling ad creatives without publisher knowledge or a lack of control from all parties about how many cookies are being called, there are many reasons why violations continue to stack up. With enforcement still lagging, it's up to publishers to be extra vigilant on how audience data is actually being used.

Traditionally, the Daily Mail reports on drama rather than creating it – but in the past month it has had more dramatic plot twists than a Game of Thrones season finale. Paul Dacre is back – and Martin Clarke is leaving MailOnline. A biting look at what's going on behind the scenes.

We talked about the potential of NFTs in our Media Moments launch event and the consensus was generally that although there may be use cases in the future, there's also an awful lot of hype. Simon Owens neatly articulates why this is the case. "The only way you make money is by finding a bigger sucker who’s convinced that they can make even more money," he says.

This is aimed at marketers, but publishers and their shiny new first-party data platforms should take note of the sentiments expressed here. While some of the proclamations are a little melodramatic, it is definitely getting more difficult and expensive to build the hallowed '360 view' of customers. Publishers should be asking whether their audiences are willing to be profiled like this, and what data is actually necessary, not what agencies want.

This week's podcast:

This special episode of Media Voices includes the audio of our launch presentation for the Media Moments 2021 report. Chris, Peter and Esther each outline which media moment of the year they found interesting, before being joined by an expert panel of media analysts to dissect the year.

Entries for 2022's Publisher Podcast Awards close next week. Are you a publisher with a podcast or two? Or do you listen to an excellent podcast from a publisher? Let them know about the Awards - check out our categories here and make sure you get entries in by Friday 17th December!