We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened
Removing advertising cookies from Sentry’s site prompted debate over how much third‑party tracking actually improves marketing performance versus how much it degrades privacy and user experience. Commenters note that Sentry’s own write‑up offers mixed, hard‑to‑interpret results—higher search ad costs, weaker display conversions, and heavy compensating tweaks—suggesting either cookies weren’t very valuable or that changes obscured their impact. The thread broadens into concerns about pervasive tracking (via cookies, Google Tag Manager, or alternatives), legal constraints like GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive, and whether the web should move toward less surveillance and more subscription or contextual models for funding content.
Perceived clarity and value of the article
- Many readers found the piece long, dense with marketing jargon, and slow to get to concrete results.
- Some felt the title (“here’s what happened”) was borderline clickbait because the net business impact wasn’t clearly stated.
- Others defended it as detailed and appropriately long for a complex marketing topic, but aimed mainly at marketers, not developers/privacy advocates.
Observed marketing impacts from dropping ad cookies
- Reported effects included: ~30% higher cost-per-click for search ads, fewer conversions on search, and sharply worse performance for display ads (partially offset by cheaper CPMs).
- YouTube campaigns optimized for watch time rather than direct conversions reportedly did relatively well and yielded cheaper conversions.
- Summary from some commenters: performance marketing got worse; attribution degraded to rough last‑click views; more reliance on alternative signals such as IP and “ad engagement retargeting.”
Debate over cookies, tracking, and privacy
- The company frames the move as privacy‑driven and says the business is still functioning, which they count as a success.
- Skeptics argue they still track users via first‑party mechanisms and other identifiers, so the change is more about adapting to an inevitable post‑3rd‑party‑cookie world than reducing tracking overall.
- Some see this as a search for new ways to do the same kind of targeting without cookies.
Compliance, “necessary” cookies, and remaining trackers
- Several users inspected the site and found multiple cookies and third‑party resources (e.g., Tag Manager, Stripe, reCAPTCHA, Vimeo, changelog tooling).
- There’s an extended debate over what counts as “strictly necessary” under EU ePrivacy vs. GDPR (e.g., login, CSRF, shopping cart, bot detection) and how long such cookies may persist.
- Representatives say remaining cookies are functional (auth, CSRF, sandbox) and some third‑party cookies are known issues being phased out; critics question cookie scope, duration, and legal interpretation.
Ad tech effectiveness and broader web impact
- Multiple commenters doubt that marketers can rigorously tie ad spend to revenue; attribution is framed as messy and often self‑serving.
- There’s skepticism that behavioral tracking actually outperforms simpler contextual targeting, citing past misreporting in the industry.
- Others warn that less effective targeting will reduce ad value, leading to more ads, more paywalls, and a push toward subscription‑only content.
Ad blocking, targeting, and user attitudes
- Strong pro‑privacy voices describe heavy use of blockers (often in whitelist mode) to remove trackers, fonts, Tag Manager, etc., and see this as both personal benefit and social responsibility.
- Counterarguments label aggressive blocking as freeloading on creators’ work; blockers respond that they may support creators in other ways.
- Many note that even with extensive tracking, ads are usually irrelevant; some prefer no tracking even if it means “worse” or more random ads.