Analytics & Cookie Consent – Benchmark Study 2021

by Katrin Nebermann

When data and consumer protectionists launched initiatives against manipulative cookie banners in 2021 and more and more consent dialogs were adapted to comply with the law, we wanted to take a closer look at the effects. To this end, we analyzed the consent data of 250 websites with around 300 million sessions in the period from March to July 2021.

Here are the most important findings from the study:

• Three-quarters of websites use illegal nudging techniques in their consent dialog design.
• On average, 24% of sessions can be analyzed with cookie consent, but only 14% with legally compliant dialog design. The trend is downward.
• Consents distort marketing analyses, as the rates vary greatly depending on the traffic source.
• Banners with more difficult rejection buy the increased approval at a high price through an increased bounce rate and thus fewer conversions.
• 83% of websites do not have to fear any serious disadvantages in marketing attribution if they do not use cookies.

Download the complete Analytics & Cookie Consent Benchmark Study 2021 for free here.