You’ll hear this from your agency sooner or later, so here it is from us first. For a business that spends a lot on paid ads, joining has a real price. Here is what it is, and why members pay it.
01Both sides of the ledger
The honest cost
No ad pixels means Google and Meta can’t see your sales. That has consequences.
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Automated bidding loses its signal
Smart Bidding, Performance Max and Advantage+ optimise on the sales you report back. Without that, they optimise for clicks. If you spend a lot on paid ads, expect your cost per sale to rise for a while.
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Retargeting and lookalikes go
No audiences built from your customers or your visitors. You can still buy ads with the platform’s own targeting.
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Some channels narrow
Most cashback sites and tag-based affiliate networks can’t work within the Standard. Code-based affiliates can.
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Some tools get swapped
Google Analytics 4, session replay, embeds that load on sight. Each has a clean replacement, and most swaps take an afternoon.
What you get
Things a pixel can’t buy.
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A promise shoppers can check
The badge shows the date it runs out and links to your public record. It isn’t a claim, it’s a checked fact.
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Usually, no cookie banner
In the UK, a site that meets the Standard typically needs no consent pop-up for its own visitor counting. It still tells visitors what it counts and lets them opt out.
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Fewer companies holding your customers
Every vendor with a copy of your customer data is a leak waiting to happen, and a line in someone else’s business model.
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Less exposure
Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic are moving on hashed uploads, surveillance pricing and cancellation traps. Members are already on the right side.
02
How members measure instead
None of these need anyone’s personal data, and all of them sit inside the Standard.
Any size of business
Tagged campaign links, read by cookieless analytics.
A promo code per channel, counted at the till.
A one-question “How did you hear about us?” after checkout.
Sales per campaign, counted inside your own tools.
Bigger ad budgets
Geo holdout tests: switch a region off, measure the difference.
Marketing-mix modelling on your own weekly sales and spend.
Platform targeting without feedback, judged on your own numbers.
Incrementality tests planned with your agency, in writing.
From members
Real numbers from real members.
As members remove their pixels, we publish what happened to their cost per sale and how long it took to settle, with their permission. The first results appear here after their first 90 days.
Still in?
Most businesses that read this far are. Check where you stand in five minutes.