Yeah. that doesn't look great.
To clarify how these "trackers" end up on a site. The ad world is complicated, and we don't handle deciding what specific ads we run. We use an ad network.
In terms of actual 3rd party services we have chosen to opt into:
- Google Analytics, and a couple of other analytics type services -- for typical page view count type tracking, knowing where our traffic is coming from, which articles are popular, etc ...
- One banner ad network. In this case, Adthrive. From there it goes into a complicated real-time bidding system whenever a page loads. This is where all these possible advertisers get brought in, and figure out in milliseconds what ad to serve you.
- A couple of affiliate services, which I'm not sure count as trackers
So that large number of trackers that are listed are coming from ad providers trying to figure out which ad to deliver. And presumably so they don't deliver it again to the same browser, or maybe do deliver it again to someone, depending.
The bottom line is that we don't pick or have control over individual "trackers" just like we don't directly control individual ads that come up on the site. They come and go in a real time auction system.
Our options to influence which trackers that end up on the site are: 1) choose a different ad network (though most are very similar since targeted ads pay more) 2) handle all ad sales ourselves 3) don't use ads at all.
#1 and #2 are difficult for various reasons.
#3, we do offer a
paid ad-free service which doesn't load the ad code, which in-turn doesn't load any of those trackers. Though we still like to use our analytics services, which technically count as trackers.
We've been talking about pushing #3 more, but there are some moving parts to that, so we haven't gotten around to it.
arn
