Marketing tags (such as Google Analytics and the Facebook pixel) track visitors to your site using cookies and other techniques. Data protection laws in the EU and UK require you to:
- inform your visitors about this tracking
- obtain visitors’ consent before starting to track them
Informing visitors
When you add marketing tags through the Settings panel, your privacy policy is automatically updated to include clauses explaining what each tag does, what data it is processing, and how to opt out.
Obtaining consent
When you add marketing tags through the Settings panel, you cookie policy is automatically updated to allow visitors to opt out of the cookies set by each tag. For example, sites with the Facebook pixel include this section in their cookie policies:
When visitors first arrive on the site, that are given the option to accept or reject all cookies:
For this to work, the marketing tag code is automatically modified to check whether the visitor has accepted cookies. For example, the modified Facebook pixel code looks like this:
<script>
W.Cookies.ifPermitted('facebook-pixel', function() {
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){ ... }(window,document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');
fbq('init','0123456789012345');
fbq('track','PageView');
});
</script>
The code highlighted in green checks that the visitor has consented to Facebook pixel cookies. The code in blue is the original tag code, which will now only run once the visitor has accepted the cookies.
Detecting marketing tags
Many providers of marketing tags try to detect whether the tag has been added correctly. Unfortunately the modifications needed to comply with data protection laws often cause the tags not to be detected, as the provider only looks for the unmodified version.
Rest assured that any tag added through the settings panel will work properly as soon as the visitors accepts cookies. We’ve used these tags on our own site at itseeze.com, as well as on thousands of client sites, for many years without any problems.
