What happens when a visitor changes their consent options in AdOpt?

As privacy laws state it is the right of its citizens to change consent options at any time, on any website or situation.

This is a principle of freedom that AdOpt respects and values immensely! So, precisely for this reason, we would like to expose the reasons that led AdOpt to design the functioning of its banner in a specific way when a visitor changes his/her consent options.

When analyzing some companies and even AdOpt competitors, we could observe the following flow:

1. - Many of them don't give the option to detail the consent options right at the 1st access, which by the vast majority of regulations is wrong. Because, consent must be detailed and specific for a given function/purpose. This is a principle that must be respected. After all, the same freedom to change is the freedom to opt-out, or choose to partially consent to tags.

2. - Ok, assuming the visitor accepts 100% of the tags/cookies listed; then, decide to edit the consent. At this point, when the 1st acceptance happened, your browser has already received 100% of the cookies fired by them in your browser.

3. - The visitor then edits and saves the new preferences.

4. - Notice that some tools at this point force a page refresh/update, according to your choice, and then no longer calls/allows the service the visitor removed the consent from.

Tip

Here is one difference from AdOpt. (We do not force a page refresh/update, and will explain why below.)

5. - Then, in a visitor's future session, the calls will already be refreshed if you have done the correct blocking setup.

**Again, to reinforce: **

• If the tool forces the update, a new session is started.
• In AdOpt, this will happen on a next access, or if the visitor refreshes the page - by their action, consequently starting another session.

6.- Nevertheless, the cookie is still in the browser.

• Browser calling for the third-party tags, from,
• Removing the Browser Cookies, from,
• Removing consent/updating consent from your logs.

Because, technically they are completely separate flows, and thereby change the flow/journey of the visitor.

But, why doesn't AdOpt force the refresh, after all it would help in the visitor's understanding of their renewed privacy options, right? That would help with usability, right?

Because, as much as it helps with the perception this would not be the definitive answer and we could also create a problem for our customers. Understand more below:

A - Forcing refresh is prohibited by many Ad Servers, because they completely change the monetization of websites that use ads to maintain themselves (publishers for example).

This is seen by many ad networks as something wrong and even criminal. Because, 1 visitor would generate 5 sessions, for example, thus greatly increasing the CPM of impressions and harming several other metrics such as CPC, ROI, etc. Not only from him - the publisher, but also from the advertisers on that website, for example.

** B -** As already stated, the cookies have already been sent. So, as the cookie banner does not have the power to remove cookies from the browser, but only change the call of the tags consented. Technically speaking, it makes no difference whether you refresh it or not, because the browser has already been "tagged" and the data has already been collected.

*Unless the ANPD or another privacy agency brings such requirements regarding the use of cookies, and modification of consent, this could then be implemented.

** The only way for a visitor to have his browser completely "cleared" of cookies, already consented to in the past, would be to clear his system.** But, no cookie banner does that today. It only changes the calls and - at most - directs visitors to a tutorial on how to delete cookies. (Understand that it is not a "bad will" of cookie banners, but it is in fact a technical barrier for us to delete a cookie from a browser, in the perspective of 1st and 3rd Party cookies and their capabilities)

** C -** Besides monetization and metrics issues, forcing a page refresh can significantly change page ranking/ranking on google. Therefore, not only a cookie banner already brings friction into the analytics metrics, for example, this impact on other metrics is even more significant.

That said, as AdOpt is committed to your full compliance and also does not ignore your metrics and marketing services, we opted - for now - to maintain this flow in our system.

Rest assured, that if there is any change in this regard all our customers and users will be notified and presented with the reasons for the change.