When someone places online advertising for you, this is often done via ad networks such as Google (search and display network) or Facebook. Depending on your needs and goals, you can choose between a vertical, blind, or targeted network partner. One of our ad experts will be happy to explain the design options, formats, networks, and costs involved.
During or after your ad campaign, you will undoubtedly want to know whether your investment is paying off. To this end, it is particularly important to collect and analyze the performance data of your ads. As a general rule, the more targeted and tailored your advertising is to your target audience, the greater your chances of success. Programmatic advertising in particular allows your advertising to be displayed to relevant users at the right time and in the right place. This reduces wastage and increases the efficiency of your advertising. In order to know which users are on the internet, when and where, and what interests they have based on the content of the websites they visit, it is necessary to track users using cookies, even across different websites.
The ePrivacy Regulation is intended to provide comprehensive protection for personal data and privacy in electronic communications, which is of course a positive development. Among other things, this is to be achieved through regulation of the use of cookies (“Cookie Directive”).
Under the new regulation, advertising and related processes require the express consent of the user. This means that targeting and retargeting measures are particularly affected by the new regulation. However, publishers and other platforms also see this as a threat to the financing of journalistic and audiovisual media, as these are often supported to a large extent by personalized and interest-based advertising.
Publishers and other platforms, however, also see the financing of journalistic and audiovisual media at risk, as these are often heavily dependent on personalized and interest-based advertising. One possible consequence of the ePrivacy Regulation could be a return to the so-called “watering can principle” — where users are increasingly bombarded with irrelevant ads.
Overall, lower investment in the ad tech industry is expected, which means that publishers may have to consider alternative monetization models for their online content. Whether this will lead to fewer free, publicly accessible offerings on the internet remains to be seen.
What is certain, however, is that there is still some time left — the German Federal Association for the Digital Economy (BVDW) does not anticipate the ePrivacy Regulation to come into force before 2021/22, and it is unlikely to be applicable before 2023/24. Still, we’ll stay on top of the issue for you and — as always — keep you informed about any important developments.
If you have any questions about user tracking on your website and your online advertising, please feel free to contact us directly. Our experts are always happy to help.
Our upcoming blog series on “Third Party Cookies” will allow you to delve even deeper into the topic of cookies. We will be posting these here over the next few weeks. Stay tuned, it's going to be exciting!
