Every regular user of the web has been confronted with what could be called ‘cookie fatigue’—the weariness that comes when you have to click, for an interminably long period, on the consent box to allow cookies (small pieces of text sent to a user’s browser by the website they visit) to process your user data. This ritual starts whenever you open a website. The European Commission is working to find a remedy for this problem, with the aim of phasing out cookies by the end of the year.
Roundtables with stakeholders—consumer protection services, publishers, advertisers, digital platforms—will be organised before May to try to find alternative solutions.
The issue of online cookies is that of web advertising: they are used to define user profiles and then adapt advertising content. Without them, it would be necessary to find new methods of advertisement personalisation. Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), cookies, in their current form, are subject to extremely complex computer mechanisms. “Cookie banners appear every time users visit a new website,” explains a discussion paper for the first roundtable. “Choices are often presented in a confusing way, which does not allow users to make an informed decision or leads them to make choices they might not otherwise have made.”
The main consequence of cookie fatigue is that users often click randomly, rather than according to their real advertising needs or desires. Some browsers are emerging that allow for bypassing cookies. Many people, the surveys show, simply do not want to be traced, or are concerned about the seemingly impossible reconciliation between the imperatives of privacy protection and the search for ever finer customisation of advertising content.
While the quest for transparency and simplicity is commendable, its implementation appears to be technically difficult. One solution that has been suggested could be to define the user’s advertising parameters at the browser level, rather than site by site. But this system, which seems simple, would have the disadvantage of centralising even more information in the hands of Google and its Chrome browser, used by the majority of the European population (60%). Another avenue to explore is to set up advertising personalisation independent of the ‘tracking’ allowed by cookies.
The projects to address the subject of cookies are numerous, but the solutions for processing all the elements of the equation are still largely unknown. From the user’s perspective, it’s the targeting of advertising and respect for privacy. For the advertiser, it’s tracking customer behaviour to get a better understanding of his needs. Many working sessions will certainly be necessary before a viable solution is found for all.
