The number of trackers shown in the report doesn't seem to be cumulative because it is not impacted when I refresh the page.
Also, every time I refresh the home page, the number of trackers varies between 18 to 27.
It must be cumulative if it comes in at 18 to 27 on any given page load, and the total is 55.
I
addressed this before but do want to clarify how these 3rd party trackers seem to work, and what our part in it is all.
We use the following services that may "track" you:
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Google Analytics + other analytics services. This lets us know how many people are visiting the site, and which pages are popular. Whether this is your first visit or your 100th.
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Adthrive - an ad network which handles our ads. Ad serving can be very complicated. It works on a real-time bidding system where whenever a page loads, it triggers a real time auction where multiple ad providers decide which ads to put on the page based on who is loading it. This includes if you've seen the ad before, if they think you like XYZ, etc... This is where all the 3rd party trackers come in -- deciding which ad you get. We don't personally contract with 55 different companies -- we don't have the staff for that. The ad network mediates all that.
So we don't pick which "trackers" are involved, similarly to how we don't decide which individual ads that gets shown on the site. It's part of the auction system. And I presume different ad providers get pulled in over time -- which is why it adds up to 55 over time.
Our options to reduce the number of trackers include:
1. Change ad networks - though most work the same way
2. Sell all ads directly ourselves - which requires more manpower and expertise than we have at the moment
3. Don't use ads and charge users $$
For #3, we do offer a
paid upgrade for $25/year that removes all ads, which will subsequently remove all ads and ad-based trackers. (our analytics software will remain).
We are looking into pushing the paid membership model more, but there's a lot of details involved in doing that well, so we have been slow about it.
arn