Hardwareluxx is slimming: In the past few weeks we have removed and revised external scripts, checked various cookies and optimized our advertising – which is why we are now in are able to make the daily Hardwareluxx reading accessible to you without a consent management platform (or “cookie banner”). In this article we explain why this makes sense for us and makes it safer and more convenient for our readers.

Our readers shook their heads a few years ago: “What does this annoying cookie banner at the bottom of the Hardwareluxx website mean? ? “, asked various readers when we had to integrate this for legal reasons. Now, over the years, people have got used to such displays when visiting a website for the first time, but according to current case law, such simple information is no longer sufficient. For various (external) functions of a website, consent must be obtained for the subsequent tracking on the website before the website is loaded. Due to the so-called “opt-in” ruling of the BGH last year and the EU privacy directive, various websites are already using a so-called consent management platform, where the reader is given the choice between tracking and another option before the website can be visited. You can always choose the variant with tracking and advertising – and on the other hand either a subscription variant or a tracking-free visit to the website. An “exclusion” of the reader if he does not want tracking is not legally permitted.

The topic really took off in the summer: Google announced that it would be using its own advertising platform only deliver advertisements for which approval according to the new TCF2.0 standard has been given. In this respect, websites that received their income mainly from programmatic advertising (programmatic buying) were forced to use a consent management platform. Google allowed another transition period, which recently started in January 2020 has been extended – but the original decision means that consent dialogues on the website are already commonplace.

This integration posed a major challenge for various websites: If a website derives its advertising revenue mainly from so-called “programmatic buying”, it is to be feared that due to the lack of consent Loss of income occurs because consent has to be given explicitly. If this is missing – for example through a script blocker or by explicitly deselecting the option – advertising can only be displayed, “tracking-free” – i.e. no retargeting or similar techniques are used. The losses for websites that cannot offer a subscription as an alternative could be even more massive – because an alternative to advertising with tracking and cookies must be offered according to the BGH.

The situation is different for Hardwareluxx: We have always marketed a large part of the advertising on our website ourselves. Initially, the aim was to display advertising on Hardwareluxx that was as target-group-oriented as possible and that would not annoy our readers, but rather interest them. Later we also wanted to have control over which advertisements were played on Hardwareluxx and in what frequency and size. In recent years, however, we have not been able to do without “programmatic buying” either, as the trend towards this form of advertising has spread massively in recent years. Our marketer Hi Media, who has also been brought on board, is also banking on this trend and many of our original advertisers also wanted to book “programmatic”.

Also a “Consent-Dialog” for Hardware Luxx?

Since the beginning of the year, we have been thinking in the background about how to implement the consent dialogue in our company. We have tried various tools on our developer servers for this purpose – CookiePro, Usercentrics, CookieLaw, Funding Choices from Google and other tools all work on the same principle, support the TCF2.0 function, which is important for the advertising industry, and manage the consent for the website, which she uses. The look is certainly different, but a lot is identical.

In conversations with webmasters from other websites, we were given initial information on how the consent dialog is viewed by the readers: Some editors-in-chief of other websites reported a bounce rate of 20% when using a consent dialog (i.e. 20% of readers close the browser immediately when a dialog of this type appears ), others saw a rejection of just under 40% for the consent, others reported an increased use of ad blockers. So it was clear that with a consent dialog, readers would react annoyed and there would also be a drop in income due to fewer advertisements. This is certainly understandable: Without an explanation, the uninformed reader can hardly make any sense of why he should give consent for sometimes several hundred companies for programmatic advertising – but that’s how programmatic advertising and the TCF2.0 standard behind it work. In fact, this specification actually helps to increase the security of advertising accordingly.

Due to the fact that Hardwareluxx mostly advertises itself, the idea was quickly born to also consider the option of not using a Consent Management Platform and Hardwareluxx GDPR instead -compliant “tracking-free” design. Overall, Hardwareluxx is currently working with approx. 80 IT companies directly together. Since programmatic advertising was never loved by us, had a low level of acceptance by readers, was often the reason for problems or criticism in the forum – and the sales were also moderate due to the small number of impressions, we say goodbye. Advertisers can book directly with us in line with their target groups and thus reach the readers of one of the largest German IT communities. The efficiency results from this reason alone.

Ultimately, we also found the choice of options unacceptable for our readers: Without a subscription model, we would have to hope that our readers would be “tracked”. But is that really something that an IT website can find good?

Hardwareluxx is “tracking-free” “

So we analyzed which scripts and functions on Hardwareluxx might be problematic. First and foremost, of course, this affects advertising, i.e. Google’s ad manager, and here in particular the area of ​​programmatic buying. Google Analytics should also be mentioned, although Google Analytics can also be configured in such a way that it can be used properly in terms of data protection law. There were also widgets and plugins on the website, such as those from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

In the last few months, these points have already been purged: We have completely deleted Google Analytics, we have also placed small data protection dialogues in front of the embedded YouTube videos and Twitter feeds (also with Video below) so that it does not start automatically. If desired, they can also remember the reader’s settings via Hardwareluxx’s own cookie. We also screwed on little things in our price comparison widget and finally freed the entire website from any tracking.

In order to deliver our own advertising in the future, we continue to rely on Google’s ad manager, but in a special configuration without programmatic buying. We have also recreated Google’s own frequency capping using our own function and will no longer use it (this would require a consent according to Purpose 1 / TCF2.0). In addition, Google has a completely cookie- and tracking-free version of the ad manager called Limited Ads, which we have already incorporated into the code. This last switch was made recently, so that Google-assigned cookie __gads has also disappeared.

In our video we explain our way – but the video is already two weeks old, and in the last two weeks we have also been able to launch Google’s tracking-free solution:

So what’s left?

Of course, Hardwareluxx continues to use some cookies: For example for the login functions in the forum, for the switcher to the dark / light mode, or for the news view on the home page. Furthermore, we have said own cookie for frequency capping and our content management system also uses a cookie. However, all such cookies are first-party cookies. These are unobjectionable under data protection law, but we must of course inform you that we use cookies on the website. In this respect, the previous “cookie banner” remains in a slightly modified form. We have also made our functional cookies erasable in our privacy policy.

There is still only one external cookie on Hardwareluxx: This comes from Cloudflare, our CDN / firewall provider. The __cfduid cookie is used to control and record DDOS attacks on Hardwareluxx and to protect against them – we set this based on a legitimate interest in accordance with. Art. 6 para. 1 let. f GDPR. You can get more information about this from Cloudflare, but no user ID or personal data is stored here.

The following cookies can currently be found on Hardwareluxx.de:

• __ cfuid ( Cloudflare)
• 3e2f 65 (long number, first-party cookie from Joomla)
• cookieconsent_dismissed (first-party cookie for the cookie notice)
• hwl_twttr (First-Party-Cookie for permanent display of Twitter feeds)
• hwldark (first-party cookie for switching dark / white mode)
• hwlyt (first party cookie for permanent display of YouTube videos)
• view (First-Party-Cookie for the Newsansic ht)
• xf _ (first-party cookies from the Xenforo forum and the login function)
• hwl_fc (first party cookie for frequency capping)

hwl_vm (first-party cookie for permanent display of Vimeo videos )

Without a cookie, but anyway Worth mentioning is a tracking pixel on Hardwareluxx, namely the VG word tracking pixel. This is used to record the calls to articles on our website and to remunerate the editors from the distribution of the collecting community. This tracking pixel is also in compliance with data protection regulations.

We think that ultimately the step towards a “tracking-free” HardwareLuxx is the right one, partly due to the fact that 3rd party cookies will soon be out of date anyway which not only applies to Chrome, but also to Safari and Mozilla. Conversely, we hope that our readers will appreciate this and therefore ask you to check the whitelist for the ad blocker once in order to allow our own advertising on Hardwareluxx. It is also worth taking a look at the privacy settings / activity tracking settings in this regard. This is the only way we can generate the income to finance our offer.