[mfontani]

One can include ads and analytics without consent being granted - they're "just" restricted to a method of delivering ads and performing analytics which don't track the user.

IANAL, mind you - but that's how we implemented it - you're opting-in to the ads that target you and analytics which track you, or you get the non-tracking/non-targeting ads and analytics.

[skrtskrt]

What are some good non-tracking & non-intrusive ad providers? I've wondered about one day being able to put a few "ethical" ads on a blog site.

[bartread]

You don't need to look far. You can simply tell Adsense[1] to serve up non-personalised ads:

    (adsbygoogle=window.adsbygoogle || []).requestNonPersonalizedAds = true;

If you do this you don't even need to check for consent since you're not tracking the user or storing any PII. In my case this is what I call if the user doesn't accept advertising cookies, but there's no reason you can't disable them completely on your site if that's what you'd like.

You also have pretty tight control over the categories of ad that Adsense can display, and you can even go as far as to review individual adverts. I've booted a couple of ads that I found to be unethical/distasteful from my site using the review feature in Adsense.

The only issue with Adsense is that there are a gazillion ads it might show on your site, so I'd recommend filtering out any categories you don't much like first, and then reviewing ads sorted by popularity/impressions in descending order, otherwise you'll quickly go mad.

[1] Obviously not an option if you absolutely don't want to do business with Google.

[luckylion]

> If you do this you don't even need to check for consent since you're not tracking the user or storing any PII.

Google seems to disagree [1]: Non-personalized ads are targeted using contextual information rather than the past behavior of a user. Although these ads don’t use cookies for ads personalization, they do use cookies to allow for frequency capping, aggregated ad reporting, and to combat fraud and abuse. Consent is therefore required to use cookies for those purposes from users in countries to which the EU ePrivacy Directive’s cookie provisions apply.

What's not clear from Google's documentation, but what I assume, is that they also do not use the info about the context & visitor to serve them personalized ads on other websites.

[1] https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/7670013

[bartread]

Hmm, that's interesting because that would suggest that if somebody declines advertising cookies then you can't serve them ads via Adsense at all... which would be an odd decision by Google.

[AstralStorm]

That's not the issue. The issue is that if the user has and sends Google cookies AdSense will use them. (And many people have third party cookies on, and AdSense might be using some tricky bypass there too.) Getting sneaky about tracking is their business model. And then cookie law is in full force.

[bartread]

Sure but it sounds like the only way to guarantee those cookies aren't sent by Adsense is simply not to use it in the event that consent is declined. Or am I missing something?

[mfontani]

Well, sure - you can still send some signals to see ads that are relevant to the _content_ as opposed to the _viewer_.

Example: you're seeing an article about devops and you get an ad about AWS instead of an ad that has followed you around from another website you visited previously.

The cookie used for frequency capping is considered to be a "technical cookie" and has no bearing on privacy, best I can tell.

The other types of cookies can be pretty much disabled at the point of calling the google tag, or enabled (along with more tracking/targeting ads) if the user consented to that.

[the_gipsy]

> The cookie used for frequency capping is considered to be a "technical cookie" and has no bearing on privacy, best I can tell.

But the comment you're responding to says it right there: Even google is telling you it requires consent. It's a cookie, so it requires consent, period. Don't fool yourself.

Could google serve ads without cookies, and do fraud detection by other means? Yes, perhaps lowering payout due to increased risk. But it much better to pretend that a cookie-banner is needed, so that you might as well enable ad-tracking cookies.

[luckylion]

Since it's a technical cookie that's required for ads/marketing, it very much falls under marketing, I believe. Imho "technical cookies" are e.g. Cloudflare's __cfduid or your framework setting a session cookie because it wants to be stateful.

[tripzilch]

> > What are some good non-tracking & non-intrusive ad providers?

> You don't need to look far. You can simply tell Adsense[1] to serve up non-personalised ads

This discussion describes exactly the problem. How long has this tracking consent law been there now??

And it's just an option in Adsense?!!!

So whenever I see a cookie banner, you can assume they are simply too greedy to flip the switch.

Clearly the adtech and adtech-supporting industry hasn't even slightly bothered to look for alternatives, instead opting to annoy the public with banners. It's pure propaganda in the hope that the annoyance will turn into defeat, and somehow they manage to turn people's disgust towards the EU law instead of them, simply continuing to do their useless crap business and pretending the EU got their hands tied ... when there's a literal boolean switch to tell their shit to behave.

[nicbou]

Affiliate marketing is the best way to go. You have full control on how you advertise products.

For my website [1], I have build close relationships with local experts. They provide services my readers need, and I know they can be trusted. I get a commission from resulting sales. I like that model because advertisers have zero access to or control over the readers' data. Unfortunately, it's simply not applicable to all websites.

- [1] https://allaboutberlin.com/

[mfontani]

I wouldn't say "ethical", but even Google's pubads can do non-tracking.

For pubads, look into "setCookieOptions(1)" and "setRequestNonPersonalizedAds(1)" for a good start on the matter.

It _can_ be done.