Digital privacy efforts continue to fall short of fully protecting consumers and marketers, especially as tracking becomes more sophisticated. While cookies have been a key part of the conversation in recent months, other tracking tools such as pixels can’t be overlooked by marketers feeling the pressure to make their websites more secure, per a recent report from privacy software company Lokker.
A string of new state laws and the renewed possibility of a TikTok sell-off mandate further complicate the privacy landscape. The complexity and urgency around privacy has led to an increase in violations, lawsuits and fines, highlighting how important it is for marketers to stay up to date on regulatory developments.
“Marketers must adapt to the rapidly evolving data landscape,” said Ian Cohen, CEO of Lokker. “Key steps include prioritizing transparency, limiting the amount of data collected, blocking third parties that are unknown, and creating a process between legal and engineering to understand and follow the rapidly changing regulatory landscape.”
The report, “Website Privacy and Compliance Challenges,” evaluated the privacy risks of 3,419 websites across four sectors: healthcare, tech, financial services and retail. All sites listed in the S&P 500 were also included in the evaluation.
Got a pixel on you
The report found the widespread use of tracking pixels, which serve a similar purpose to the third-party cookies currently being phased out by Google for privacy reasons. The small, often invisible pixel collects information on the user and is activated when the consumer opens an email or loads a web page.
Nearly half of all websites (47%) have a Meta pixel, while 12% have a TikTok pixel. However, this is far below the rate of cookie usage, which deploy on 98.5% of web pages when loaded. Despite this high rate of usage, only 67% of websites utilize consent banners. However, 98% of these websites load the cookies before the consent banner, per Cohen. Additionally, 2% of websites use trackers from China, Russia or Iran.
There are multiple reasons why many trackers and cookies are missing from consent manager tools, per Cohen. However, the main one is how dynamic the ecosystems are for third-party trackers and ad tech.
“A web page might have 100 third parties load on day one, 140 load on day two, and 80 load on day three. Without transparency into these changes, it’s not possible to address the underlying issue,” said Cohen.
While the TikTok pixel’s rate of usage is relatively low, it bears considering due to the criticism the platform has come under in recent months. A new sell-off bill making its way through Congress has been gaining traction, with the app’s foreign connections a hot topic of debate. Among the websites reviewed by Lokker, 24.7% with the TikTok pixel were retail, followed by 8.7% of tech sites. To put that into perspective, 58% of retail sites and 42% of tech sites had Meta pixels.
Sensitive data
The report found that 10% of websites share sensitive information with a third party, while 0.4% share extremely personal information. While consent tools are becoming more popular, they often fall short of being fully effective. Consent banners were most popular among S&P 500 websites at 88%, followed by retail and tech at 67% each. However, 100% of S&P 500 websites deployed cookies on page loading.
With the shortcomings of available software, the report sites manual oversight as necessary in order to stay in compliance. This will be of increased importance as states continue to pass privacy laws, thereby ensuring compliance will only become more difficult.
“Companies have to navigate a maze of regulations and enforcement actions, rather than following a single federal standard. It is unlikely that this will change, as the states have already established their own definitions of what is permissible,” said Cohen.
