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Tag: Gdpr
- 07 Dec, 2025
Audience Measurement and GDPR: How to Track Your Visitors Without Cookie Banners (Legally)
It has become the web's most annoying ritual. You arrive on a site, and before you can even read the headline, a window pops up: "We value your privacy… Do you accept our 85 partners?". For the user, it is a nuisance (the famous consent fatigue). For the site owner, it is a dilemma: display this banner and lose a portion of your data, or don't display it and risk a fine from the data protection authority. However, a third path exists. A lesser-known path that is 100% legal and much more respectful: consent exemption. In short:The banner is not automatic: It is only mandatory if you track your visitors for advertising or profiling purposes. The CNIL exemption: It is possible to measure your audience without asking for consent, provided you respect strict rules regarding data frugality. The double gain: By removing the banner, you improve the user experience and recover statistics from visitors who previously refused tracking.1. Why Cookie Banners Cause Data Loss Why do we see these banners everywhere? Because the majority of traditional analytics tools (like the default configuration of Google Analytics) collect personal data and often share it with other advertising services. The GDPR is clear: for this, explicit consent is required. The problem is that internet users have had enough. According to the latest Eurobarometer, 72% of European citizens say they are worried about how their data is processed on the web. The consequence is immediate: when given the choice, many refuse. It is estimated today that a site using a classic cookie banner loses between 30% and 50% of its actual data. Your dashboard is lying to you: it only shows you a fraction of your audience.2. Understanding the Consent Exemption The CNIL (the French Data Protection Authority) is one of the most pragmatic institutions in Europe on this subject. It has established a clear doctrine: audience measurement is essential for the proper functioning of a service. Consequently, certain measurement tools can be exempted from consent. In other words: you have the right to place an audience measurement cookie or use a tracker without asking the user's opinion, and therefore without displaying a banner. But be careful, this is not a free pass to do whatever you want. It is a strict framework that favors what is known as frugal analytics. Checklist: CNIL criteria for exemption To benefit from this exemption, your tool and configuration must respect these conditions (non-exhaustive list based on CNIL guidelines):Strict purpose: The data must only be used for audience measurement (no retargeting, no advertising profiling). Anonymization: The IP address must not allow the user to be geolocated more precisely than their city (the last bytes must be deleted). No cross-referencing: The data must not be crossed with other databases (CRM, browsing on other sites). Limited lifespan: Raw data must not be kept for more than 13 months.→ Official Source: CNIL – Solutions for audience measurement tools3. Why Switch to "Privacy-First" Measurement? Adopting a consent-exempt analytics solution is not just a legal hack. It is a competitive advantage. You recover 100% of your visibility Since you no longer need to wait for the user to click "Accept", the measurement script loads as soon as they arrive on the site. You go from a partial view (the 60% who accept) to a near-total view of your traffic. You polish your brand image A site without an aggressive pop-up is a site that inspires trust. You send a strong signal to your visitors: "Here, we don't spy on you, we just look at global statistics to improve the service." You simplify your compliance No need to update complex CMPs (Consent Management Platforms) or fear a formal notice because a button is wrongly placed. By collecting less data (data minimization), you mechanically reduce your risks.Conclusion: Compliance Through Simplicity For a long time, it was believed that the GDPR would kill web performance measurement. In reality, it just killed "bad" measurement: the kind that surveils people individually. For small businesses (SMBs) and agencies, the future belongs to sober tools that natively respect these exemption criteria. It is the guarantee of sleeping soundly while having reliable figures to steer your business.FAQ: Analytics and Consent Is Google Analytics 4 (GA4) exempted from consent? By default, no. GA4 collects personal data and often transfers it outside the European Union (to the USA). The CNIL has specified that to make GA4 exempt, a complex and costly "proxyfication" is required, which is out of reach for most SMBs. If I don't have a cookie banner, am I breaking the law? Not necessarily. If you do not use any advertising trackers (like Facebook Pixel) and your analytics tool strictly respects the CNIL exemption criteria, you are perfectly legal without a banner. You simply need to mention the tool in your privacy policy. What is IP address anonymization? It is a technique that consists of deleting the last part of a visitor's IP address before recording it. This prevents tracing back to the person or their household, while still allowing you to know, for example, that the visit comes from the "London" region. This is a sine qua non condition for exemption.
- 06 Dec, 2025
Why the Era of 'Data Obesity' is Paralyzing Small Businesses (and How to Escape It)
We were sold a dream. The "Big Data" dream. For ten years, the promise made to SMB leaders, freelancers, and marketing managers has been the same: "The more data you collect on your visitors, the better you will sell." The result in 2025? It is often the exact opposite. Tools have become unwieldy, bloated systems, creating what is known as data obesity. In short:Too much data kills decision-making: Excess information overloads dashboards. The trap of "Vanity Metrics": We follow flattering curves instead of focusing on what actually generates revenue. A triple cost: Technical (slow site), legal (GDPR), and trust (visitors refusing tracking).1. The Syndrome of the "Dashboard We Never Look At" Open your current analytics tool. In less than 10 seconds, can you tell:Was your week good? Which page generated the most leads? Which traffic source performs the best?If the answer is no, you are not alone. The abundance of options, reports, and dimensions eventually fatigues users. This is a phenomenon well-documented in behavioral science: choice overload.Source: The Decision Lab – Choice Overload BiasMore information $\neq$ better decisions. On the contrary: too much choice leads to inaction.2. The Race for "Vanity Metrics" In many small structures, the metrics that occupy the top of the dashboards are also the ones that help the least with decision-making:Page views, Total number of sessions, Bounce rate, Visitors by country…These indicators stroke the ego, but they say nothing about the actual performance of a website. For a small business, a useful dashboard should answer three questions:How many people are discovering my site? (Acquisition) Which pages generate the most requests or sales? (Performance) How much does this represent each week? (Result)If your tool doesn't allow you to answer these immediately, it is distracting you from your main goal: understanding what works to grow your business.3. The Hidden Cost of Complexity 3.1. The Technical Cost Traditional analytics tools often load heavy scripts that degrade Core Web Vitals. An independent audit shows that third-party scripts (analytics, chat, marketing pixels…) can significantly slow down loading times.Study: How Popular Scripts Slow Down Your Website https://bejamas.com/blog/how-popular-scripts-slow-down-your-websiteLess speed = fewer conversions = less revenue.3.2. The Legal Cost (GDPR & CNIL) The more signals you collect (geolocation, browsing history, technical identity…), the higher the legal risk. As a reminder, the CNIL (French Data Protection Authority) explicitly provides for a consent exemption for audience measurement tools that respect strict conditions:Official Source: CNIL – Cookies and audience measurement toolsThis exemption is too little known, yet it changes everything for small businesses that want to measure traffic without friction.3.3. The Cost of Trust (Cookie Refusal) Another perverse effect of classic analytics: cookie banners. According to the 2023 CNIL report, nearly 40% of visitors refuse cookies, which completely skews the collected data.Source: CNIL – Evaluation of the impact of the cookie action planIn some sectors, a portion of visitors also uses script blockers, which further amplifies data loss.4. The Solution: Frugal Analytics Frugal analytics does not mean measuring less due to a lack of ambition. It consists of measuring better, by focusing on what:Helps with decision-making, Respects privacy, Does not slow down the site, Does not introduce legal friction.This approach enables:Faster decisions, Clearer steering, More reliable data, Much simpler compliance.Conclusion: Put Your Analytics on a Diet The era of collecting data "just in case" is behind us. For 2025, the best strategy for an SMB is not to add dashboards, but to remove them. Less noise. Less friction. More concrete decisions. Frugal analytics is about putting data at the service of the business, not the other way around.FAQ: Understanding Frugal Analytics What is frugal analytics? An approach that limits data collection to the bare minimum necessary to make a decision. Which indicators should absolutely be kept? Visitors, key pages, traffic sources, conversions. Nothing more is needed to steer a small business. Can you do frugal analytics with GA4? Yes, but it requires advanced expertise to make the tool compliant, lightweight, and readable. For the majority of SMBs, simpler approaches exist.