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Troubleshooting Low Attribution: The Impact of Cookie Banners on Polar Pixel
Troubleshooting Low Attribution: The Impact of Cookie Banners on Polar Pixel

Are cookie banners blocking Polar Pixel? Learn how to boost attribution by improving consent rates and ensuring correct permissions.

Sachi avatar
Written by Sachi
Updated over a month ago

Overview

If you're seeing lower attribution rates in your Polar Pixel data, a common reason is the cookie banner on your website. When users reject marketing and analytics cookies, the Pixel is blocked, preventing it from tracking their activity. Below, we'll explain how this affects attribution and what you can do to mitigate the issue.

New to Attribution?
If you're unfamiliar with what attribution is or want to understand how to check your attribution data in Polar, we recommend reviewing our help center article, How can I improve my Polar Pixel attribution rate?. It covers the basics of attribution, how to view your data in Polar, and provides key steps for improving your attribution rates.

Why Does the Cookie Banner Affect Attribution?

When a cookie banner is active on your website, it asks users for permission to track their activity. If a user rejects marketing and analytics cookies, the Polar Pixel and other tracking mechanisms are also blocked. This results in incomplete tracking data, affecting attribution accuracy.

Impact on Attribution Features

  1. Reduced Tracking Capability
    Without cookie consent, the Pixel has limited ability to track user behavior across devices and sessions. This means fewer conversions and interactions are captured.

  2. Incomplete Data
    With lower consent rates, you may see an increase in "direct" or "undefined" traffic. This happens because the Pixel can't accurately attribute users who reject tracking to their original source.

  3. Less Accurate Decision-Making
    Incomplete data may lead to less reliable marketing decisions, as your reports won't fully capture the effectiveness of campaigns and channels.

Troubleshooting Steps

Here’s what you can do to improve attribution data:

  • Modify Cookie Consent Flow
    To encourage more users to accept cookies, ensure the banner is prominently placed and makes acceptance quick and easy. Adjusting your banner settings to make the process smoother and more intuitive can increase the likelihood of users opting in, ultimately improving Pixel performance.

  • Ensure Banner Compatibility
    If you're using a third-party cookie banner, make sure it’s compatible with Shopify's customer privacy settings. This ensures that the Pixel isn't blocked when cookies are accepted. You can find more information on this in the Shopify documentation.

How Cookie Consent Affects Tracking

  • Inactive Banner: The Pixel tracks all users by default without waiting for consent.

  • Active Banner: The Pixel only tracks users who give consent.

For third-party banners, ensure they work with Shopify’s customer privacy system. This can be done by your banner provider through Shopify’s API.

Pixel Permissions

For the Polar Pixel to work correctly, both Analytics and Marketing permissions need to be enabled. The Pixel will not collect data when the customer opts out of their data being sold.

By ensuring proper cookie consent and banner compatibility, you can improve the accuracy of your attribution data and make better-informed marketing decisions.

The best source to understand how consent works is Shopify's official documentation here.

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