Why does this website use so dang many ad trackers?

[Slackertown]

As you can see here:

https://themarkup.org/blacklight?url=nationstates.net

Over double the average website. What the heck?

[The Unified Missourtama States]

Well if you don't like it you can leave.

Overall however NationStates respects your right to privacy and right not to spend money way more than other sites (you literally don't even need an email address to join).

https://www.nationstates.net/page=privacy

[[violet]]

Fair question. We use a single ad provider, but they support "header bidding," which is a technology where ad slots are auctioned off in real time to competing ad networks. I'll ask the provider, but I suspect this is why there's a high number of different ad networks detected.

[[violet]]

More detail from our ad provider. But basically yes, it's because we use a platform that invites many different ad channels to compete for ad slots, rather than giving all traffic to Google.

The number of ad trackers on your site increases as there are more demand channels/ad networks in your ad stack. Ad trackers also come with ad-related solutions such as Consent Management tools (CMP), e.g. Quantcast, and data tools, e.g. LiveRamp.

These trackers are generally used to collect data for targetting and user validation to prevent ad fraud.

As most publishers do not have access to multiple demand channels, e.g. AdSense publishers, the number of ad trackers for most sites will be a fair bit lower than your site.

However, our tag solution, Fuse, is quite lightweight on this regard as we don't do any data-collection with our tag. When you compare your site to other publishers that have multiple demand channels plugged-in, the number of ad trackers on your site is significantly lower.

For example, the same tool detected 45 ad trackers on news.com.au and 33 on edition.cnn.com. See attached screenshot for reference.

[Slackertown]

More detail from our ad provider. But basically yes, it's because we use a platform that invites many different ad channels to compete for ad slots, rather than giving all traffic to Google.

The number of ad trackers on your site increases as there are more demand channels/ad networks in your ad stack. Ad trackers also come with ad-related solutions such as Consent Management tools (CMP), e.g. Quantcast, and data tools, e.g. LiveRamp.

These trackers are generally used to collect data for targetting and user validation to prevent ad fraud.

As most publishers do not have access to multiple demand channels, e.g. AdSense publishers, the number of ad trackers for most sites will be a fair bit lower than your site.

However, our tag solution, Fuse, is quite lightweight on this regard as we don't do any data-collection with our tag. When you compare your site to other publishers that have multiple demand channels plugged-in, the number of ad trackers on your site is significantly lower.

For example, the same tool detected 45 ad trackers on news.com.au and 33 on edition.cnn.com. See attached screenshot for reference.

Thank you for the detailed reply!