What does EU GDPR means for Adsense?

Question about GDPR and Adsense.

[hwint]

Question: What does EU GDPR means for Adsense?

Most of the Adsense income is from interest based ads. Will this be affected by the EU GDPR?
I'm concerned because today with the latest update for my Android Phone, I got asked for permission related to interest based ads. (Maybe it is because I did disable it before. This is to see the normal ads on my pages with Adsense. But I'm still concerned.)

[Travis]

If it applies to EU citizens in the US, Canada and India. Then I believe we should show the cookie popup to everyone, and not just Europe.

Legal requirements apart, this is fair to threat all visitors with the same right. The right to be (at least) informed in that case.

[sudarshanms]

@Mayank how to access the privacy tools in wordpress?

[Cralamarre]

I asked my wife last night if she has seen the new Privacy Checkup box in Google. She said yes. I asked her if she did anything with it. She said no. I asked why not, and she said "Because it's just one more thing".

Her reaction to having the option to adjust all of her privacy settings was to ignore it. I have to guess that most people will feel the same way.

[edited by: Cralamarre at 12:50 pm (utc) on May 18, 2018]

[NickMNS]

If it applies to EU citizens in the US, Canada and India.

It doesn't.

[MayankParmar]

@sudarshanms Update WordPress. Hover Settings option and click Privacy. Or access directly:

https://www.example.com/wp-admin/privacy.php

[MayankParmar]

People with WordPress should ask the theme developers for cookie consent feature. It would do a better and reliable job than a plugin or script.

WordPress is compatible with GDPR, but most of the hosts, themes, plugins firewall are still not ready with just one week remaining :/

[steviec79]

One week remaining, but do you really think from 25th May, websites are going to blow up because they're not yet ready? 99% of websites won't be ready by then. People are over-panicking and some are a bit paranoid.

Chill.

[BoredMeteor]

steviec79: "One week remaining, but do you really think from 25th May, websites are going to blow up because they're not yet ready? 99% of websites won't be ready by then. People are over-panicking and some are a bit paranoid."

Totally agree. I'll even go so far to predict that nothing is going to change at all, especially where smaller websites are concerned. But we'll see.

Also, about how to treat EU users who happen to be in the U.S., Google's own policy states: "you must ensure that certain disclosures are given to, and consents obtained from, end users in the European Economic Area." Wouldn't this mean that Google's own policy only covers people physically in that area? Or is "European Economic Area" just another way of saying EU?

I'd also like to know how many people, publishers and web browsers combined, actually know anything about the GDPR at all. Especially those not in the EU.

[steviec79]

If you're browsing in the USA, for example, then you're browsing the Internet under US law - not EU law. Therefore, I don't see why a website would need to alert you. The cookie will get information about where you are, and what you've been browsing while in the States.

[ember]

I agree that this is getting out of hand. Nothing will change on May 25. The goal of this GDPR is not to shut down sites right and left. That is not Google's goal, either. We just have to see how this plays out over time.

[bgweb]

The main concern I have right now is that virtually everyone else will continue running personalised ads in the EU and I will lose out because I switch them off.

[Cralamarre]

I personally don't expect to see anything happen on May 25, other than a lot of webmasters suffering from hangovers from the night before.

[Cralamarre]

I know this has nothing to do with AdSense, but I just updated my Wordpress social media plugin and now it's telling me that I can no longer display the number of shares my articles have received because of the GDPR. This is just ridiculous. Bye bye common sense.

[TheEnigma]

One aspect I find abhorent is that most people who run a site have no idea how they'd actually determine if a visitor is from the EU or not.

Current solutions are costly and frankly far too complicated.

The GDPR should have come with a provision and Universal Mechanism which meant Browsers would have been updated to send a conditional flag in the header.

Simple, 'Resident of EEA = true'.

These clowns have spent billions and they couldn't have done this.

Currently there is no simple and instantaneous way of determining if a visitor is in the EU or not.

And that is frankly a travesty.

Trying to instigate this GDPR on the world and not even considering how the hell most websites would be able to accurately and SIMPLY determine if the visitor was browsing from the EEA.

[keyplyr]

Treat everyone the same.

[sudarshanms]

@Mayank, Thank you I have done that. Are you using any specific template for privacy policy in wordpress specifying about adsense?

[tangor]

Sorry kiddies, this is not about the small fry but a money grab to the majors. Those folks (ICANN excepted) have already put their ducks in a row.

As for personalized ads, who freakin' cares? G became what it is long before "interest based personalized ads" ever existed. Killing that might actually see some sanity return to advertising.

Call me in the wait-and-see corner. I do have a dunce cap handy if I'm wrong.

[MayankParmar]

For personalized ads, one my rival site is showing a big popup only in EU:

We and our partners use technology such as cookies on our site to personalise content and ads, provide social media features, and analyse our traffic. Click below to consent to the use of this technology across the web. You can change your mind and change your consent choices at anytime by returning to this site.

There's I accept, I do not accept option. They are also detailing the vendors (advertisers), they are apparently not using just AdSense.

I do not accept option redirects to privacy policy page.

[steviec79]

Good for them. I won't be doing that.

[tangor]

The Fudge Factor blossoms. Will it actually bloom and smell sweet?

WAIT AND SEE HOW THIS PLAYS OUT.

There's an over-reach on one side (EU). Take no doubt that the corresponding response stomps it flat, big time.

WE "the small fry" have no skin in this game. Look at the parameters embedded in the policy. They have defined what monetary levels will be pursued (and it you can't see it, look again). Your bottom line needs to be billions of dollars to excite any joy of prosecution.

Again, GDPR is aimed at FB and G (MS is a distant third) and maybe T because of the shotgun effect.

Take a chill pill. Meanwhile (those old enough) remember how the world ended on YK2.




Sigh.

[MayankParmar]

I am not at all worried about the legal consequences. Just trying to make that AdSense account is safe.

[engineerqasim]

Hello,

I have been going thru this thread for several hours. Since I am using Adsense as main source of income from my websites, I am quite worried. So far, different users have suggested different solutions. I would like to what I got from this to be on safer side:

1) Show non-personalized ads to EU users. (this can be done from with-in Adsense)
2) Even for non-personalized ads, we will need to get explicit consent regarding use of cookies from EU users. So need to implement system for this. Right?

My question what is the easiest way to implement this system? I mean by only showing a popup might not solve the issue, because if user do not allow use of cookies, then we will need to have some mechanism that will all-together not show any Adsense ad to that particular user. How can this be made possible in easy way?

Lookin forward anxiously. Like most of other followers of this thread, I rely only on Adsense to monetize my content, so too much worried about this GDPR compliance.

[markwmo]

Is there a source that GDPR applies to EU citizens anywhere in the world?

[davidfroud.com...] argues the opposite: an EU citizen outside the EU isn't covered (but a non EU citizen within the EU is covered). Also see [linkedin.com...] . Of course those are just two people's views, and I still don't think it's as clear as those articles make out (also see the many questions in the latter link). But I don't see where the claim comes from that GDPR covers a person in the US accessing a website, because of their nationality being within the EU?

[ChanandlerBong]

it is fascinating to already see what others in the UK are doing, some are fudging completely because they clearly think their bottom line is going to get hit too hard. Some are "sort of" respecting GDPR in the smallest way possible, mostly by filling their PP with lots of highfalutin legalese. But, it isn't 25th yet, can't wait to do some trawling around on that day.

I don't think personalised ads will die with GDPR, I just think it will become less surgical, less connected to the individual. If you get a cookie put on your system that marked you as "central europe tourist" instead of "searched for berlin hotels, first week of June" I wonder if that would be legal?

[woody midrib]

FWIW, I just finished an experiment disabling interest-based ads which led to 14% lower RPM. My users are almost exclusively from the EU, so it seems I have to live with that. My only hope is that Google puts more resources into improving their algorithms for content-based ads.

[ember]

I did just fine before personalized ads came along. In fact, maybe better because my site content attracts well paying advertisers. So I really wouldn't mind if personalized ads disappeared and we went back to contextual ads. And it would eliminate so many of these privacy concerns.

[Cralamarre]

How do personalized ads even fit into the AdSense model of "the highest bidder wins"? If AdSense shows a personalized ad instead of a contextual ad, does that mean the personalized ad pays more than any contextual ad? Or does AdSense simply think that personalized ads have a better chance of being clicked regardless of the bid?

[ChanandlerBong]

My CTR is better for contextual (by quite a bit), my CPC is better for personalised, but not by so much so overall, contextual brings in c.7% more. So I may end up winning more if it goes predominantly contextual. There'll be winners and losers. I can imagine some people really being hammered by not being able to show personalised.

[NickMNS]

How do personalized ads even fit into the AdSense model of "the highest bidder wins"? If AdSense shows a personalized ad instead of a contextual ad, does that mean the personalized ad pays more than any contextual ad?

Bidding happens on page impression level. Each page impression gets it's own auction. At that point in time the advertiser that bids the highest (price is adjusted based on a quality score) wins the bid. Whether the ad is contextual, or personalized doesn't really factor into per-se. But each bidder in the auction will have specific features that they are targeting. So one bidder maybe looking to place an ad on site due to the context, whereas another maybe targeting that impression due to the user's browsing history. But in all cases the highest price wins the auction.

Now preventing personalized ads will limit the bidders in the auction (reduce demand) and this certainly reduces prices. Even if you are seeing lots of contextual ads limiting personalized ads will still impact you. This is because as long as the personalized ads are in the auction the contextual ad bidders need to bid higher then them to win the auctions.

[ember]

Unless personalized ads are phased out altogether. Then contextual ads would simply be bidding against other contextual ads.