"We protect their privacy. Now please take some cookies." That's how you could summarize the result of the field study on cookie layers presented by computer science post-doc Martin Degeling at our Excellence Forum #50 in November. One number in particular stuck with us from the great presentation by the researcher from Ruhr University Bochum: 0.1%. That's how many online users agreed to the setting of marketing cookies in empirically reliable experiments. The figure refers to voluntary, active consent to marketing cookies - as opposed to, for example, statistics cookies. We are happy to link to the study "(Un)informed consent: field study on consent layers after GDPR" here (English).
Users want relevant online advertising?
"Users want relevant online advertising". How many times have we heard that since 1997? Communication and propaganda professionals know that if you repeat non-existent and untrue things often enough and long enough in your communication, they will eventually be accepted as fact and believed.
It works the same way in the conflict between online advertising and privacy. Ever since there have been flashing banner gifs, it has been claimed that the problem with the lack of acceptance and impact of display advertising is its "wrong", not interesting, not appropriate, etc. content. content. Instead, all you need to do is deliver the "right content, at the right time, to the right user, etc. usf...."
But it is not the content that is most disturbing. It is the special usage situation in the Push pull medium online, which ensures that online advertising is disruptive. That's the big difference from "lean back" TV consumption. Here, advertising is less annoying. Not because it is "better," "targeted" or "personalized. It's because it's in the medium of TV, with its specific usage situation on the couch, per se less disturbs.
Online advertisers want monitored users. The EU does not.
The myth of "relevant advertising" is central to the online advertising industry. Because only this argument (or the arguments of autocratic regimes like China) justifies global, almost Orwellesque surveillance of all users of smartphones and online services. Total transparency - what for? This benefits not only GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) but also ad marketers, media agencies and technical service providers behind online advertising that have not yet been monopolized.
In online practice, "relevant advertising" means: targeting, performance marketing, "precision marketing" and much more.
Behind these terms are technical services that collect and aggregate personal data. Such activities, data sets and information can be used at any time to restrict the freedom of a citizen or all citizens. They are potentially dangerous to democracy and therefore also subject to consent since the DSGVO (in European: GDPR) came into force - from A to Z. What the (apparently) measured effect is all about can be read here.
"Privacy by default. And what will users do then? Not agree
Users must agree to the use of cookies "informed" (!) according to the GDPR. "Privacy by default", this is the data protection basis of the EU laws. No setting of cookies without explicit consent. And lo and behold, more and more tech companies are following suit. The default settings of Mozilla, Safari and soon Chrome will block cookies that are not set by the website you are visiting.
And how will users react to the new situation? In all likelihood, not at all. This is how one can interpret the results of Martin Degeling's study, which examined cookie layers on 6,759 websites as well as the reaction of 82,000 online shoppers to various forms of cookie layers.
Addendum to 0.1%: The researchers were so fair and also published the measurement results of commercial providers on the research experiments. Cookiebot reported 5.6% instead of 0.16%. You can be successful online without cookies. We are happy to tell you how.