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.)

[fretfull]

I'm glad more people think that google dropped the ball by not providing us a consent solution. When I talked about it earlier, I got push back that it wasn't google's problem. It is. They provide us the script to display ads they should provide us with the script to get consent to display those ads. We don't have or use a visitor's PII, google does. They should be the ones managing the consent.

[fretfull]

Julesuk, unfortunately freegeoip is shutting down and becoming ipstack. While ipstack is free for the first 10,000 lookups a month you'll have to move to a pretty decent paid plan to get enough lookups a month. Even on my tiny site, 10,000 lookups don't go far. Even with some local caching of recent lookups, say the same visitor comes back again and again, 10,000 lookups don't go far. I might have to switch to the free PHP solution. The problem is that I'm on a shared host so I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to install plugins. Worst case, I guess I could write my own PHP code to search the database directly. That will be slow.

[Cralamarre]

I just read the entire Digiday article about Google's plans to become part of the IAB framework and offer tools for publishers, and had to laugh when I reached the end because I actually read the entire article before noticing the cookie consent banner and the "I Accept" button at the bottom. :)
[digiday.com...]

[BoredMeteor]

I 100% blame the EU for this nonsensical regulation.

You can blame Google and Facebook for the NEED of regulation, sure, but come on: THIS is what they came up with?

[vegasrick]

@bgweb, just because you turned off personalized ads on a certain site, you may have agreed on another website for consent and it could reading that cookie - or gave consent when searching google.com or something like that. I read a disclaimer somewhere about turning off personalized ads on a site does not mean you won't keep getting them due to off-site consents.

[steviec79]

This all came about due to Facebook - just as Twitter changed their policy due to the 40,000 'Russian bots' when Trump was going for the presidency.

Also, if this tells you anything, it's this: make a living away from Adsense. I was doing 6 figures a year (£), just with Adsense. Not anymore! But you can't rely on any source of income when you have to rely on a company with little to zero common sense. It's just asking for trouble.

[bgweb]

@vegasrick that's an interesting perspective. However I cleared my browser cache completely (cookies) and was still getting personalised ads sprayed around like confetti despite disabling them again. I'll not name the publishers (in case the issue is at my end or along the lines of what you suggest) however they are easy to find.

[MayankParmar]

"Google’s move to make its own ad tools compatible with the IAB framework is a victory for publishers."

Can someone explain how?

[steviec79]

Can I ask why I keep receiving an email every time somebody replies?

This isn't 1999. There must be an option to only receive 1 email, until I re-visit this thread?

[romerome]

"This all came about due to Facebook - just as Twitter changed their policy due to the 40,000 'Russian bots' when Trump was going for the presidency. "

GDPR was started in Jan 2012. It was adopted by Council of the European Union on April 8th 2016. This was well before the Nov 2016 election or cambridge analytics controversy.

[surfgatinho]

just because you turned off personalized ads on a certain site, you may have agreed on another website for consent and it could reading that cookie - or gave consent when searching google.com or something like that. I read a disclaimer somewhere about turning off personalized ads on a site does not mean you won't keep getting them due to off-site consents.

I suggested this earlier in the thread - i.e. difference between read and write permissions. It isn't the publishers job to block or delete cookies set by a third party...

Can't really see why, with the correct wording, consent for personalised ads from one site wouldn't cover other sites.

[QuaterPan]

Can't really see why, with the correct wording, consent for personalised ads from one site wouldn't cover other sites.

I understand that this is the purpose of the IAB framework consent mechanism. And in all events, this is how all will end with the upcoming ePrivacy Regulation, where it will be at the level of the web browser. This is why the GDPR and ePrivacy Regulation were scheduled to be applied at the same time. But meanwhile, things will remain chaotic.

[BoredMeteor]

They should've just pushed the GDPR back along with it, then.

[ember]

So, as I understand it, this upcoming ePrivacy Regulation will bring consent down to the browser level and won't happen until at least 2019, probably later. No more cookie banners needed. Non-privacy intrusive cookies that improve user experience - shopping cart histories, etc. - will not require consent. Marketing cookies, which regulators do not think improve the user experience, will require an explicit opt in or opt out at the browser level. In other words,

"End-users should be offered a set of privacy setting options, ranging from higher (for example, ‘never accept cookies’) to lower (for example, ‘always accept cookies’) and intermediate (for example, ‘reject third party cookies’ or ‘only accept first party cookies’). Such privacy settings should be presented in an easily visible and intelligible manner."

Marketers are pushing back, saying that ads can improve the user experience if well-targeted and without ads there will no longer be many user experiences because most sites' free content is only available thanks to ads.

Many expect sites to block users that do not agree to cookies. Yep, that would be my plan.

[QuaterPan]

So, as I understand it, this upcoming ePrivacy Regulation...

This is my understanding too.

Many expect sites to block users that do not agree to cookies. Yep, that would be my plan.

The risk is that, excepting Google Chrome, other browsers might apply the ePrivacy Regulation world wide, and not only for EU Users.

[steviec79]

So, as I understand it, this upcoming ePrivacy Regulation will bring consent down to the browser level and won't happen until at least 2019

My sister's friend is a lawyer and I spoke to him tonight (off chance) about this. He says, what I think we all know, that it's all up in the air, and there's no chance anything would go to court within the next 12 months because it's about a lot of people knowing very little about anything.

So there's no way a judge could possible taken history into account.

[tangor]

I will remark that free legal advice is worth what you pay for it.

We don't give legal advice at Webmasterworld. We do have opinions, however, and like every one knows with a nose, some of them smell.

[MayankParmar]

My AdX partner is having a emergency meeting.

It looks like some publishers are experiencing 80-90% drop in overall earnings, including the USA.

#GDPRGoBack

[Cralamarre]

I'm sure you know this, but keep in mind that this is a holiday long weekend in both the US and the UK.

My AdSense earnings were actually pretty good yesterday, which was a surprise. UK earnings were still down from the previous week, but US earnings were up more than 20%.

[QuaterPan]

We don't give legal advice at Webmasterworld

This topic sounds like a legal advices and not just recommendations, or opinions -
[webmasterworld.com...]

It looks like some publishers are experiencing 80-90% drop in overall earnings, including the USA.

There is no reason that GDPR impacts US earnings, excepting if you disable interest based ads for everybody (and still it might be profitable at the end), or having a modal message box, for all visitors, blocking the access. If earnings decreased from US ads, the problem is to be searched elsewhere.

Or, GDPR third-party tools, like cookiebot, may mess up a site. I don't know.

[bgweb]

Would anyone like to give an opinion (subjective I know) on the legality under GDPR of running a "sponsored by" message on the "splash screen" which informs users about cookie use the first time they visit a website? If it is legal I see a massive opportunity here.

[steviec79]

I will remark that free legal advice is worth what you pay for it.

It wasn't free. I bought him a pint.

[surfgatinho]

It looks like some publishers are experiencing 80-90% drop in overall earnings, including the USA.

My earnings have been pretty good the last 3 days. Haven't compared to last year, but the earnings seem to be as good as anytime I can recall. This applies globally, although I am 75% UK

[steviec79]

Earnings so far looks to be around a 50% drop.

But things take time. If advertisers know that more people are displaying non-personalised it may have a knock on effect and start higher bidding wars.

[BoredMeteor]

Quick question for anyone who might know:

If I wanted to actually pause ad requests before a consent choice, Google says "another option is to defer loading gpt.js and adsbygoogle.js." Does this mean it's okay to use a brief setTimeout on the call to adsbygoogle.js so the function can check for a cookie? I saw a Google engineer say you can even wait until onload (https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/adsense/gIRe6gwAaMI/8tm8F63K7uoJ), so I'd guess this would be fine, but I don't know. If I run it without a setTimeout or onload, it'll run before any cookie gets sent, defeating the purpose.

Does anything weird happen if adsbygoogle.js is deferred? Would responsive ads load correctly?

Don't know if I'm going to do any of that, but was curious. Dealing with Adsense always feels like handling plutonium to me.

[ember]

Dealing with Adsense always feels like handling plutonium to me.

Can't answer your question, but this is so true.

[glitterball]

Looks like I spoke too soon. I've got good page view numbers today, but on track to being the worst ever day with adsense.

[glitterball]

Well, even though I turned off Personalised ads several days ago (well before the 25th), I have started seeing personalised ads again on my sites, and I am within the EU.
Either that, or the emperor has been exposed.

[RedBar]

Absolutely utter garbage numbers, in the next couple of days I shall be locking-down all sites to trade registered customers only, after 25 years Joe Public will have no privileged information.

Do I care?

NO!

[Cralamarre]

My Adsense earnings were down as expected yesterday due to the holiday, but today is looking better. So far I haven't seen any real sign of trouble, although most of my traffic is from the US.

However, I've decided not to sit around waiting and wondering if ad revenue will continue in the future. As soon as you start giving people full control over things they don't understand (like cookies), it's not going to end well. So I'm already looking into offering members-only content. These days, it wouldn't take much for membership sales to surpass my AdSense revenue anyway.