Tip of the Week: Data Loss

2023-03-29 / Tip of the Week

How to prevent Data Loss in Web Analytics

Data is essential for successful, data-driven marketing. That’s why ensuring a sufficient database is currently the most important topic in digital marketing. But the data is threatened by the increased requirements for consent under the GDPR and TTDSG, ad blocking and browser protection measures. Depending on the web analytics solution, only a fraction of users, interactions and conversions can still be tracked. Although usually not the complete blind flight threatens, the view can already be dangerously limited by:

  1. Consent requirement: Losses of between 50 and 90%.
  2. Ad blocking: Losses of around 10%.
  3. DNT (Do Not Track) and GPC (Global Privacy Control)*: Losses of around 15%.
  4. ITP**: Cookie lifetime limits for around 40% of users, but mostly less than 10% of journeys.

However, these losses can be avoided and the database maintained:

  1. Consent requirement: EU-based cookie-less privacy-friendly session tracking does not require consent under either the TTDSG or the GDPR.
  2. Ad blocking: Server-side tracking (very costly) or tracking via a separate domain (only setup of the domain required, see https://www.etracker.com/en/docs/integration-setup-2/tracking-code-sdks/set-up-your-own-tracking-domain/).
  3. DNT (Do Not Track) and GPC (Global Privacy Control)*: Use of web analytics service that contractually excludes data from being used for the provider’s own purposes, shared or added to overarching profiles (see https://www.w3.org/TR/tracking-dnt/ and https://globalprivacycontrol.org/).
  4. ITP**: Neither server-side tracking nor tracking via a custom domain helps to avoid the runtime limits. For longer customer journeys, micro-conversions can be used for ad control, which can be transferred server-side to Google Ads & Co.

* Do Not Track signals can be interpreted as an objection within the meaning of GDPR Art. 21 (5) with regard to the transfer and sale of the data to third parties or use by the provider itself, as Google reserves the right to do (also CCPA).

** Safari Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP): For 1st party cookies, the validity period is set to 24 hours if the referrer is a known tracker.

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