Transcend: Cookie consent banners hurt rankings

Three quarters of technology executives agree that cookie consent banners negatively impact their website’s user experience and want to eliminate them, but not at the cost of customer trust, according to a new study by privacy engineering company Transcend. The study asked technology executives about the current state of consent tools.

Many companies are accustomed to tracking customers to deliver personalized experiences. With modern privacy laws, like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, companies are now required to notify customers through a consent banner or pop-up before they can begin tracking. Pulse surveyed 100 global technical leaders on how they manage user tracking and consent preferences on their company’s websites.

In the survey, leaders acknowledge they face a strained balancing act between customer trust and their customers’ online experience. Cookie consent banners often negatively impact their site’s user experience and, if there were no legal or negative brand implications to face, leaders would remove them from their websites.

Shockingly, this report found that the vast majority (79%) of businesses admit that their user data tracking across the company’s websites and channels is not fully compliant. An even greater majority (90%) were not able to confirm that they were aware of all types of tracking technologies operating on their company’s website. Modern day trackers go beyond cookies and third-party scripts – tracking components can live in everything from web beacons to pixels, fonts to stylesheet loads.

Pulse surveyed 100 Directors, VPs and C-suite executives from global companies ranging from 200 to 10,000+ employees in Q2 2021.

Read the full 2021 Consent Report from Transcend.