Impact Of GDPR On Ecommerce

Google just quietly removed one of the most important privacy controls advertisers had in Google Analytics. And they framed it as "simplifying." Yesterday, the Google Analytics team announced that starting June 15, the Google Signals setting will no longer control how advertising data flows to Google Ads. Until now, turning off Signals was a deliberate choice many companies made to prevent GA from sharing ad cookies and signed-in user data with the Ads platform. A single, clear lever: off means off. After June 15, that lever disappears for advertising purposes. Signals will only control behavioral reporting inside GA4 itself. Ad data collection moves entirely to the ad_storage setting in Consent Mode. If a user consents to ad_storage (and many consent banners default to "granted"), Google Ads will collect and associate their activity with their signed-in Google account, regardless of your Signals configuration. The only way to block this is to set ad_storage to "denied" by default. But Google's own notice warns that doing so will "significantly impact advertising measurement and conversion tracking" and "hinder the performance of your campaigns." So your options are: let Google collect more data for its ad business, or accept degraded campaign performance. Pick one. Google is also offering a 90-day grace period to update privacy disclosures. If nothing meaningful were changing about how user data is handled, why would disclosures need updating? For EU and EEA companies, this gets even more complicated. Six DPA enforcement actions against Google Analytics already. GDPR liability sits with the data controller, not with Google. And now advertisers have less granular control over what data flows where, while still bearing the full legal responsibility. A few things every analytics practitioner, advertiser, and company should know right now: • If you had Signals turned off as a privacy measure, that protection no longer extends to advertising data after June 15 • Your Consent Mode implementation just became the single most important configuration in your stack • If your CMP is misconfigured or defaulting to "granted" without proper user interaction, you may be collecting data you're not legally entitled to • If you're in a regulated industry, your legal and compliance teams need to see this notice today, not next month I'd love to hear from people deep in GDPR and privacy compliance on this. Does shifting the control from an explicit analytics setting to a consent mode parameter that many orgs struggle to implement correctly actually make things simpler for anyone other than Google? While this may be legal (is it?), it feels like they are going around the original intent of many of these regulations. From where I sit, this looks less like simplification and more like Google moving the levers to where they benefit Google the most, which is their Ads business. cc Aurélie P. Rick Dronkers Brian Clifton Phil Pearce

🇪🇺💡Today, the European Data Protection Board published its Recommendations 2/2025 that aim to clarify when #ecommerce providers may lawfully require users to create an account as a condition for accessing offers or completing a purchase. 🔹The #EDPB stresses that mandatory accounts generally expose individuals to unnecessary and disproportionate risks such as expanded identification across sessions, longer retention of personal data, increased attack surfaces through dormant accounts, and greater opportunities for tracking and profiling. 🔹The EDPB reiterates that controllers must identify a valid Article 6 #GDPR legal basis and demonstrate strict necessity for each processing purpose. Account creation is rarely “necessary for contract performance” as one-time purchases can be fulfilled through guest checkout without persistent identifiers. 🔹Even after-sales services, exercising consumer or GDPR rights, or verifying eligibility conditions can be delivered through alternative, less intrusive mechanisms such as temporary links or secure upload forms. By contrast, mandatory accounts may be justified for genuine subscription models that require recurring authenticated access, or for exclusive, closed-membership communities where account-based identification is integral to the service. 🔹Controllers also cannot rely on Article 6(1)(c) GDPR unless a precise legal obligation explicitly requires account creation, which is seldom the case in typical retail or tax record scenarios. Article 6(1)(f) GDPR provides no broad justification either: purposes such as order tracking, operational convenience, customer loyalty, facilitation of future purchases, or fraud prevention fail the strict necessity and balancing tests when equally effective and less intrusive alternatives exist. The Board underlines that users do not reasonably expect compulsory account creation in ordinary purchasing flows, mainly when prompted only at checkout. 🔹Accordingly, the EDPB recommends that e-merchants offer genuine choice: a voluntary account or a guest checkout option. Guest mode better reflects data minimisation, limits retention, reduces security risks, and supports transparency by allowing individuals to understand and control the scope of processing. Additional services such as loyalty programmes, personalised recommendations or facilitated re-orders must rely on an appropriate legal basis (typically consent) and remain clearly separated from the core purchase process. 🔹Overall, requiring user accounts should be lawful only in narrow, well-defined circumstances where controllers can demonstrate strict necessity, such as for subscription-based services. In all other cases, forcing account creation breaches Article 6 GDPR and undermines data protection by design and by default. #privacy

Black Friday/Cyber Monday ad costs are about to hit record highs 🚀 But you don’t need to sit back and watch your CPMs eat your budget. Here’s what my European e-commerce brands are doing to stay ahead (and stay GDPR-compliant): 1) Upgrade your data game Go beyond basic API setups. The more you invest in data infrastructure, the better you'll target. 2) Capture more with first-party data GDPR-compliant and more accurate than third-party solutions. I’m using https://aimerce.ai for my clients – it’s been huge to say the least. 3) Double down on retention Email and SMS are your friends here. Focus on driving that lifetime value. 4) Post-purchase cross-selling Tap into ad networks to reach customers after they buy. More conversions, less cost. Don’t let privacy concerns stop you from competing. First-party data is the most GDPR-compliant and effective solution. You could be capturing 40% more customer profiles and improving targeting by doing it right. Stay competitive this BFCM while respecting your customers’ privacy. It’s a no-brainer. * I am an advisor for Aimerce

EDPB makes it clear in their Opinion published today that if a user of a large online platform does not consent or withdraws consent for the processing of personal data for the purpose of behavioural advertising, the platform must cease *all* processing activities related to behavioural advertising including processing related to monitoring behaviour for the purpose of developing a profile and including data not collected directly from the data subject. This means that Meta’s shadow profiles developed and maintained by Facebook through the deployment of scripts and pixels on third party websites, SDKs in apps, lookalike and custom audience data obtained from third parties etc. all now require specific consent (always have but due to lack of enforcement, Meta have got away with this for many years). So a large part of Meta’s mechanisms which give them their competitive advantage are effectively outlawed without explicit and specific consent. This is one of the biggest pieces of news from the Opinion published today. My advice to any company which plans to continue using Meta’s advertising products is thus: 1. Make sure you ask Meta to prove they have consent from the data subjects they plan to target, to process such data (or you are paying for nothing); and 2. Make sure YOU can prove YOU have consent to share customer data with Meta as well. Both with be required for the data exchange to be lawful and you are jointly liable under the GDPR should EITHER consent not exist. #privacy #gdpr #compliance #advertising #ethics #surveillance #surveillancecapitalism #law #marketing #adtech #martech #segmentation #consent #cookies #facebook #instagram #legal #dataprotection

Just analyzed a €3.5M GDPR fine that every company running targeted ads needs to understand. A French retailer with 10.5 million loyalty program members got hit hard by CNIL - Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés. The violation? Transmitting customer data to a social media platform for targeted advertising without valid consent. Here's what went wrong: 🔎 The company collected consent for email and SMS marketing. Then assumed this covered sharing data with a social network for ad targeting. Two completely different purposes. Two separate consent requirements. ⛔ The membership form mentioned nothing about data transmission to third parties for advertising. Information about this processing was buried across multiple documents, accessible only through links at the bottom of pages. Three critical failures: 1. Consent wasn't specific - agreeing to receive marketing emails doesn't equal agreeing to have your data matched with social media profiles 2. Information was fragmented - users had to click through multiple links and read separate documents to understand what was happening with their data 3. **No DPIA** conducted despite processing data of 10.8 million people and cross-referencing with external databases ❌ The company argued only 1.6 million people actually saw targeted ads. CNIL rejected this. All 10.5 million whose data was transmitted were affected. ⛔ Additional violations: weak password policies [26-bit entropy vs recommended 50-bit minimum] and cookies placed before consent. 🛡️ This case clarifies something crucial for businesses expanding into EU markets: legitimate interest for your own marketing doesn't extend to sharing data with third-party platforms. What consent mechanisms does your organization use for third-party data sharing?

We are more or less living in a tracked society since #onlinetracking is one of the cornerstones of #digitalization. Since its implementation in 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (#GDPR) has transformed the digital #advertising landscape, but has it truly curtailed online tracking? In their new IJRM - International Journal of Research in Marketing paper, Klaus Miller, Karlo Lukic, and Bernd Skiera provide answers. They analyzed 32 months of data from 294 #publishers to assess GDPR’s real impact, that is, how the number of trackers used by publishers changed before and after the GDPR. They find that: 1) GDPR led to a 14.79% decrease in trackers per publisher, primarily reducing #privacy-invasive trackers that collect and share personal data. 2) Advertising trackers remained largely unaffected, meaning targeted advertising is still viable despite the regulation. 3) Larger tracker providers (e.g., Google, Facebook) were better at adapting, while smaller tracker providers saw a sharper decline, suggesting GDPR may have unintentionally reinforced market concentration. 4) Non-news publishers (e.g., e-commerce, recreation sites) reduced tracking significantly, while news publishers continued using trackers at nearly the same rate, potentially due to ad-driven revenue models. In sum, GDPR effectively curbed the most invasive tracking, yet left advertising tracking largely intact, which potentially benefits the dominant players. Hence, future public policy might have to better balance privacy protection, competition, and economic viability in the digital advertising ecosystem.

Brands must take the lead in embracing data minimization, guiding their agencies to prioritize contextual and environmental signals over invasive personal data collection. With privacy regulations tightening globally—from GDPR and LGPD to the CCPA and Maryland’s MODPA—relying on excessive data hoarding is both legally risky and not in line with what consumers want. Instead, brands should focus on signals that truly drive performance. A consumer’s interest in cooking or sports is often enough to build brand affinity and drive conversions, proving that privacy-conscious, context-driven advertising isn’t just compliant—it’s more effective. https://lnkd.in/eWPJXWMi