Hey guys,
Thank God It’s Friday!
January is almost over, Christmas decorations are already packed, Valentine’s is only three weeks away – it seems 2017 is a really good year to be a marketer!
Even more so!
We don’t know if you’ve heard, but the EU is tackling the obscene “cookie law” as they understand that it has been a little too draconic.
The initiative started back in 2012, when websites operating in the EU required users consent to show cookies, as users thought it violated their freedom to use websites without be peddled with goods.
We mean, seriously, receive consent for any cookie on the website whatsoever? How many people actually click “yes” for every friggin’ thing on a website?
So the EU has devised some new guidelines to ease into this “cookie law” as well as just reduce the number of pop-up banners that are being shown to users, thus ruining the user’s experience..
For starters, collection of user’s experience enhancement cookies such as “lost carts” would be allowed without consent.
Second, we could continue collect cookies about users visiting our website, ergo remarket if we need to.
Don’t get us wrong, users’ privacy is one of the most important things for the whole experience.
There’s an entire philosophy and even an economy based on experience, and users that can’t feel safe in our website, would just stop visiting in the first place.
They don’t want everyone to follow them around the web, especially with pesky ads but some things are still important for the marketing industry, which makes billions of dollars every year – even for the EU.
So, besides intrusive cookies such as collection of data that is not used for better user experience (mostly to serve ads), there is a cutback on many banners.
This still is bad, since gmail could not scan emails in the EU to serve tailored ads to users without their consent, messaging services such as WhatsApp and others would need to ask for many other permissions from users to serve them something that isn’t messaging related (such as ads).
But what’s with the sudden change? We mean, the advertising industry is important for the economy, so why the easing?
The EU found out that not only Google and Facebook suffer from this, but also major newspapers and media networks. Since many users consume their media online for free, cutting back on ads would mean paid subscriptions – something that many Europeans would not prefer to return to, as less and less people read their newspapers in pressed format.
Would this mean further easing in the future? Perhaps, perhaps not.
We are always the optimistics here at ZEFO, and we believe that the regulators should adopt a “laissez-faire” policy.