THThePhysicist·Sep 30, 2020
We're building open-source privacy solutions for websites and we also regularly scan the web for tracking technologies, as the article says Google Analytics is by far the most popular technology we find, followed by Facebook tracking pixels, Adobe Tag Manager and other analytics services. That said the amount of tracking on a site depends greatly on how it is funded. Websites that generate their revenue from advertisements tend to have 5-10 times more trackers installed than e.g. e-commerce websites.
So right now it's pretty much a "Win-Lose" situation as website publishers try to force privacy-invading trackers on users, which clearly have no interest in being tracked. Current consent management solutions are (IMHO) not a great solution for this problem, as consent managers that use dark patterns (e.g. each tracker needs to be disabled b
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y hand, decline buttons are hidden two or three layers deep, ...) are not compliant and consent managers that give users a free choice have bad opt-in rates (which is not surprising). On our own site for example, about 50 % of users decline consent (live stats here: https://kiprotect.com/klaro/demo), based on consent requested via our own, user-friendly consent manager (it's open-source btw: https://github.com/kiprotect/klaro).
Another dilemma is that most publishers don't want to force invasive tracking on users, but they don't have much choice as the tracking/analytics market is highly concentrated and there aren't many privacy-friendly options that can deliver the required functionality and visibility.