The EU privacy directive: What is ‘strictly necessary’?

Paul Cook, analytics consultant with Blue Latitude, on the impact of the EU’s privacy directive on digital marketing and sales tracking



Imagine this. For a few years now you have been working withIT to push Web-tracking changes higher up the priority list. No longer is a lack of impact on end users an adequate excuse as to why a tracking code error isn't fixed as quickly as that blurry image on the homepage. The marketing teams no longer ask the "Web analyst" to identify why campaign X didn’t perform as well as campaign Y. This is because you integrated the data analysts and the marketing teams some time ago and thus created a team that understandsevery online nuance of their consumer,from the sites they regularly visit, to the time of day they view their emails, to the format of creative they are most likely to click on.

At board level, although these operational changes were difficult to sell in, the impact has been tangible. Discussions have moved beyondvisitors, TOS and hits to how the site, app, or Facebook pages are driving online and offline sales. Senior directors may even have a Geckoboard screen around the office showcasing online performance metrics in a plethora of time ranges. This has led to more emails and conversations around performance metrics with directors and senior managers across the business. Your ‘water cooler’ time is no longer spent discussing Downton Abbey, but how your campaigns are performing.

The outcome of all of this is that you and your company are moving up the analytics maturity model. You’re happy and content that decisions being made by you and your teams are the right ones, based on data-driven insight.

Then along comes something called the EU privacy directive, enough to pull most analytics managers out of their current contented state and make them want to hide in the nearest stationary cupboard. 

Why is this? When implemented, this directive will seriously impact everyone involved in digital activities. Whether it be the marketing individual responsible for evaluating last month’s performance, an account manager at an agency sending through that conversion report, a content manager discussing the A/B tests from the latest round of changes, or the director about to agree the next wave of online spend. In one moment you've just moved from multichannel aggregation to analyzing a sample of visits and dropped down a few levels on the maturity model in the process.

And all because of the cookie

The EU privacy directive insists that site owners require consent from users in order to place anything, including cookies, onto their devices. Requesting permission from a user before placing a cookie onto their device is unlikely to yield a positive response. The implications will be wide reaching; no data means no data-driven decision-making.

However, those who have read and analyzed the directive will find that permission is not required if the access is deemed to be ‘strictly necessary’. This offers some of us hope in that by not requesting prior consent, we will have a rich set of statistics to analyze. For those of us who are still hiding in the cupboard, maybe this gives us a chance tore-define ‘strictly necessary’.

The industry’s current interpretation is fairly limited to: "adding to basket" functionality only. I'm guessing the more creative amongst us will be offering up a number of examples of what is ‘strictly necessary’ to enforcement bodies across the EU. For information-only sites, is it averagely necessary to know how your PPC budget is being spent on and what you’re getting from it, or is that strictly necessary? Is it moderately necessary to know how to split that last click referral percentage between the four other affiliates who drove the sale, or is that strictly necessary? Is it unnecessary for me divulge my box-set addiction for period dramas set in Northern England to my girlfriend, close-family and friends, who on hearing the news will no-doubt disown me, or is that strictly necessary?

So perhaps that last one doesn’t count, but it’s time to speak up on just how ‘strictly necessary’ cookies are to the digital industry.

Paul Cook is analytics consultant with digital business and marketing consultancy Blue Latitude.

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