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.)

[MayankParmar]

Maybe the cookie consent results in accidental clicks and G is deducting the real revenue?

[flatfile]

Before anyone panics.

Programmatic ad buying plummets in Europe
Since the early hours of May 25, ad exchanges have seen European ad demand volumes plummet between 25 and 40 percent in some cases, according to sources.
[digiday.com ]

[MayankParmar]

But Europe only, right?

It has nothing to do with a dramatic drop in the US revenues. So I can continue to panic.

[flatfile]

It would be reasonably straightforward to have a consent bar with a main ´I accept’ button that also had a text link offering ’no personalized ads’ - which if clicked then takes the user to a page where they can ask for their IP address to be listed, and I could add it to a db table (along with the date so it can be deleted after 12 months).
All visitors could then be compared with this table, and the ‘no personalized ads’ flag sent to google for ads for these visitors. No need for a cookie on their pc.

That's if you only worry about desktop users. Most mobile networks dynamically assign IP addresses via DHCP services, which means they change all the time.

[Rasputin]

Thanks flatfile, cookies it is then.
MayankParmar, i have had the silk tide banner a long time, no evidence of it slowing the site and I only get about 0.2% deduction for invalid clicks.

[MayankParmar]

[youtube.com...] (comments section)

It looks like the people are quite happy with GDPR. Sigh

[NickMNS]

and the ‘no personalized ads’ flag sent to google for ads for these visitors. No need for a cookie on their pc.

No cookie, yes and... One still needs consent to store and send the IP address to Google so what does this solve exactly? Wait I know, now you need to invest in a DB to track and manage user IP's. And the point made by Flatfile.

@Flatfile, the digiday article is worrying, hopefully budgets not spent in Europe will be spent in the US.

@Mayank

It looks like the people are quite happy with GDPR.

Yes as I mentioned before the intent of the law is good people should be pleased, specially when you break it down to its simplest, your protecting people's privacy from big companies. How could anyone object to that? But the problem with GDPR lies in the implementation and the degree of complexity (which is simply ignored by regulators) required to achieve the stated goals. People are pleased because they see an immediate impact, all those emails. But over time those same people will begin to realize that many of the services and conveniences they have taken for granted will have changed or stopped outright, or wont work as in the past, or free services will then be paid. This realization will be gradual so there wont be a big out cry, simply a generalized frustration.

[MayankParmar]

Google is investing a lot in WordPress, and hopefully they will launch a plugin to help publishers meet GDPR needs. They can and they should.

@Nick Are you still not showing cookie consent?

[NickMNS]

Are you still not showing cookie consent?

No cookie consent.

[Cralamarre]

The 25-40% drop in EU ad revenue reported in that article doesn't explain why my UK earnings have dropped 90-95% since Friday. It's almost like ads are not appearing at all. I still think it has something to do with the Silktide banner, so we'll see. I'm just very thankful that the EU makes up only 10% of my visitors, otherwise I'd be in serious trouble.

[NickMNS]

Given the a high variability in revenue from AdSense, it is impossible to draw any cause and effect conclusion from only few days worth of earnings. This specially true when one is discussing a low volume of traffic (ie 10% of total). i.e.: when a single or a few big clicks could totally change the outcome.

[Cralamarre]

Actually, my UK AdSense earnings are usually quite stable and predictable. But on May 25th, UK earnings literally dropped from dollars to cents.

[grierb]

User consents to Non-Personalized Ads - User does not consent to Google - do not make an ad call to Google read on Publisher EU user consent journeys

Anyone using any solution to this also they require to make records of all consents,is it possible?

[vegasrick]

I'm using Cookiebot, which records all consents.

Based on my conversations with many of my UK friends, they absolutely despise the GDPR.

Since May 25, they are no longer able to access many of their favorite sites like USA Today, LA Times and several others - who are now blocking all EU traffic.

[bgweb]

@vegasrick I'm in the UK and USA today is currently available in full to me. LA Times is blocked though.

[Cralamarre]

@vegasrick Have you been getting many consents? Or are most people opting out of personalized ads?

[bgweb]

What I'd like to know is how bounce rate is changed by using something like Quantcast modal overlay. A number of sites are using it as opposed to a banner. An interesting possiblity with a modal overlay would be to get someone to advertise / sponsor it.

[MayankParmar]

Looks like I am the only one experiencing massive drop in revenue from the US.

USA Today has removed ads in EU [twitter.com...]

[jxlarrea]

Memorial day weekend. Thursday should be back to normal.

[vegasrick]

We've had a massive amount of consents, because we give the option of clicking "OK" to our disclaimer language or in the alternative to head over to our privacy policy to change cookie settings (direct link within cookie banner). I would say the vast majority click "OK" because they are accustomed to doing that with the crazy amount of sites showing cookie banners and they want to read the content and not toy around with settings on another page.

However, I'm not pausing ads prior to EU consent, as I see major sites and high trafficked websites from all over the world showing ads on first view with their consent banners. I have the consent banner, I provide an easy way to opt out of everything, a very easy to read privacy policy and I record every single consent. I'm not going any further than that. I would say ALL of my competitors (at least 20 that I checked) are ignoring the GDPR. They have no consent banners, no way to opt out, nothing.

[Cralamarre]

@vegasrick And you're showing personalized ads by default?

[jxlarrea]

I actually show a consent blocking modal (for EU users only) and do not load any ads until Accept or Reject are clicked. Then I proceed and load the adsense script with requestNonPersonalizedAds accordingly.

[vegasrick]

@cralamarre, Yes - and so are dozens of other major sites that I visited today under EU IPs through my VPN - especially sites in non-EU countries like America, Mexico, Japan, China, Russia, Ukraine, etc.

And as stated, not a single one of my competitors has complied with GDPR in any way. Some of them don't even have a privacy policy and have been that way for YEARS.

In the overall scheme of things, EU revenue is around 10% of my revenue.... maybe. The other 90% is US, Canada, Australia.

In the worst case scenario, I'll write a script that shows one of my other ad networks to EU users instead of Adsense, which is not my big moneymaker. I almost fully dumped Adsense last month and only use a small amount of their units. Only one per page on mobile.

[markwmo]

"The "quick fix" for this is not turning off personalized ads. AdSense support page says this: "

It's a quick fix for the GDPR which this thread is about. You're quoting about the pre existing ePrivacy directive which has been around for years.

For that, show a "we use cookies" popup or whatever. But you should have already been doing that, right?

[BoredMeteor]

Well, I guess I should pop in here with a status report: I have nothing to report. Not really.

MayankParmar: "Looks like I am the only one experiencing massive drop in revenue from the US."

I saw a substantial dip yesterday in U.S. CTR (my primary audience), which I can't explain as U.S. traffic shouldn't be affected by my cookie implementation at all. Revenue tanked. (Edit: Well, I can kind of explain it, as it is a three-day Memorial weekend, after all. Keep forgetting.)

But today things seem to have returned to normal. One thing I did do before yesterday was turn off mobile anchor ads, because I haven't quite decided how I'd want those to function along with the stupid consent pop-up. Seems like it'd be too much going on at once. But those things are hit-and-miss, anyway.

vegasrick: "I would say ALL of my competitors (at least 20 that I checked) are ignoring the GDPR. They have no consent banners, no way to opt out, nothing."

Yeeeep. In my niche, I think I'm the only one who's spent any meaningful amount of time messing with this stuff. A few have maybe tweaked their privacy policies, but that's literally it so far. Well, maybe one put up a banner, but I know for a fact they're based in the UK, so they were probably paying more attention by default.

[edited by: BoredMeteor at 7:44 pm (utc) on May 26, 2018]

[bgweb]

I'm 100% contextual on first look. Daily uniques between 30k and 100k. It's VERY early days but at this stage I can't tell whether revenue is being measurably impacted or not.

[engineerqasim]

Can anyone put some light on how to use requestNonPersonalizedAds function to call ads only when consent is given? That would help lot of publishers like me who are not well-versed in coding.

[bgweb]

@engineerqasim the easiest way is to use server side code and branch it:

If cookieconsent ==true
Show original ad tag
Else
Show contextual ad tag
End if

You can do something similar with client side JavaScript but it's more involved IMO.

[surfgatinho]

After seeing some very unpleasant CPC on a few sites yesterday I turned personalised ads back on (this week will be one of my busiest - not blowing that if I can help it).

Anyway, having a great day today -decent CPC - so I wouldn't assume advertisers have fled the market.

[surfgatinho]

the easiest way is to use server side code and branch it:

Unless your site uses caching - which I think all mine do...