Measurement and marketing without cookies

An amendment to the law on electronic communications was passed by the Chamber of Deputies. This brings about fundamental changes in the use of cookies on websites. While the law is still pending the President's signature, it is likely to enter into force on January 1, 2022. What does this mean and what needs to be done until then?

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What exactly is changing?

Until now, the Law on Electronic Communications has applied the opt-out principle, which means that you notify the user when you come to the website that you use cookies, but you use them immediately after they arrive on the website. Typically, these are bars along the lines of “The website uses cookies, by using it you agree to this”:

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The user will now need to give clear consent to the use of cookies — e.g. by clicking on the “I agree” button, etc. And only then can we start using cookies and other similar technologies. This is how the consent is processed by the idnes.cz server:

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Notes:

• The law also applies to similar technologies, such as browser storage, etc. Therefore, it is not only possible to replace cookies with another technology that stores some data on the user's computer.
• The law does not apply to technically necessary cookies — for example, necessary for logging into the service or for storing an e-shop cart.

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What does this mean in practice?

Cookies use a lot of tools on the web. Incidentally, these are:

• measurement tools — Google Analytics, Hotjar, Smartlook, ... ,
• remarketing platforms — Google Ads, FB pixel, Sklik Remarketing, ... ,
• conversion codes — Google Ads, FB pixel, Sklik Remarketing, ... ,
• affiliate measurement codes — CJ, AffilBox, ... ,
• chat tools — SmartSupp, ... ,
• videos embedded in the web — YouTube, Vimeo, ... ,
• social networking buttons for sharing or commenting — FB like box, ... ,
• and others.

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All of these platforms and tools will need to be modified so that they do not use cookies without user consent. If you manage a website or e-shop, there is almost certainly a lot of work ahead of you.

Beyond the technical adjustments themselves, however, the change will have other consequences. Some users will not give you consent to the use of cookies (and you can assume that this will be more than 50%. Which will have other consequences) and some of them we can already guess by now:

• Drastically reduce the performance of Remarketing and RTB Campaigns — you will not be able to target remarketing ads to users who have not given their explicit consent. Which, in practice, may at best be half the users. Operators try to work with this, e.g. AdFoM introduced the concept First-Party ID.
• Inaccurate data in Google Analytics — even without cookies, you can run Google Analytics code, but users without consent will appear as one-page visits (bounces). Each subsequent page will be treated as a new visit and a new user. Thus, it will be quite difficult to evaluate the measurement of conversions even within sessions, multifunnel will be almost impossible.
• End of campaign evaluation in the interface of marketing platforms — the number of conversions recorded in conversion codes (Google Ads, Sklik, Heureka, Goods,...) will be significantly distorted. Campaign optimization data will be difficult to use on platforms.
• Impact on Affiliate platforms and their partners — these use cookies to credit a commission to the partner who brought the conversion. Therefore, partners should lose 50% of credited conversions in the best case. For these, we envisage switching to a different way of crediting conversions, e.g. using discount codes.

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Campaign evaluation problem

Google Analytics will have a problem with data in how conversions to individual sources will be evaluated. Let's imagine a situation where a user comes to the site from Google/CPC, goes through 4 pages in which he makes a purchase on the site. It may now look something like this:

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Now (with cookies) we can see in GA where the user came from and how much he bought during a given visit. But what will happen at the time of consent? Let's take 2 examples:

User does not give consent

For the same case in which we show the user a cookie bar on the start page, but the user clicks on “I do not agree”:

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Google Analytics sends pings to the server, which contains information whether they are with or without consent. If I do not receive cookies, the entire session will not appear in Google Analytics.

The user gives consent only on the 2nd page

Okay, but what happens if the user agrees, but not right on the first page?

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In this case, we still lose information about the original source. Consent must be obtained as soon as possible. If the user does not give consent on the first page, this will have a significant impact on the evaluation of campaigns.

Google Analytics 4 can partially fill gaps in the data — to work with conversions, they can do part of the conversions on conversion modeling basis estimate assigning them to their sources. Data on visitor behavior (what pages they saw, flow on the site, etc.) will be missing. All data will be missing in Universal Analytics.

What needs to be done?

There are definitely some basic steps waiting for you

1. Mapping — you need to write down what tools you actually use and what these tools use cookies. Furthermore, it is necessary to write down the internal processes that use these tools and describe how the modifications affect them.
2. Deploying the Consent Collection Tool — you can choose any of the existing (mostly paid) tools, or create your own.
3. Technical adjustment of measurement and marketing platforms — the launch of marketing platforms will need to be adjusted to respect user consent. If you use Google Tag Manager, it will be easier for you. If not, we recommend starting with it.
4. Technical modification of the site — typically these are videos embedded on your site, FB and other sharing buttons, etc., which are inserted into the site directly by your programmers. There will be a need for them not to do this. For example, instead of a video, they displayed a still image, and then they loaded the video only after the user clicks.
5. Process Edit Are you optimizing campaigns? Do you report from Google Analytics? Think about how you are going to do this again.
6. Paperwork — on this occasion, we recommend that you review whether you have contracts with entities that process (or have access to) your data.