Navigating WebTag Compliance with 6sense: What Marketers Need to Know

In the fast-paced world of online marketing, staying ahead of compliance concerns is just as crucial as driving results. With growing attention around data privacy laws like the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), many marketers using 6sense have questions about the WebTag, how it works, and what their options are for considering compliance with legal requirements.

This blog serves as a guide to understanding the facts and supporting your organization in continuing to leverage 6sense with confidence.

The 6sense WebTag: What it does (and doesn’t do)

At its core, the 6sense WebTag helps marketers analyze web traffic at a company level — not an individual one. When a visitor lands on a website where the tag is deployed, 6sense collects web traffic data such as IP addresses, cookie IDs, and advertising IDs, mapping them to companies using our proprietary IP-to-company graph.

Under our privacy-forward approach, 6sense does not identify the individuals visiting your website using data collected from our WebTag, nor do we use our customers’ web traffic to create consumer profiles or track individual users across the web. 6sense does not resolve WebTag data to an individual level, but instead, as a B2B provider, we identify those companies that are in-market for our customers’ products, ensuring that marketing insights remain privacy-forward while delivering powerful analytics.

Privacy configuration options: Using the 6sense WebTag responsibly

Our customers are responsible for ensuring that website visitors — where required — receive notice about the data collected on the customer’s website as well as the opportunity to opt-in or opt-out (as applicable) from collection of their data. 6sense customers have flexibility in how they configure their 6sense WebTag to align with their privacy practices and compliance goals.

1. Require opt-in consent

There are two components to the 6sense WebTag: (1) the JavaScript, and (2) the cookie. Features of the 6sense WebTag provide our customers’ web admins the ability to either: (1) place both the JavaScript and cookie behind a cookie banner, or (2) place just the cookie behind the cookie banner while allowing the JavaScript to fire.

The 6sense JavaScript allows for account identification without dropping a cookie. In this case, while our customer will not collect cookie information to track a specific visitor’s journey, the JavaScript will be able to identify a specific account that has visited the customer’s website, and information such as date/time of access, browser used, etc. to provide value to the customer. Many customers consider this an important use-case because it allows for website personalization depending on the account that is visiting the website.

Additionally, organizations can choose to require explicit opt-in consent before triggering the WebTag. This means a visitor must actively accept tracking via a cookie consent mechanism before any data collection occurs.

While this is a more conservative approach, requiring opt-in may reduce concerns related to privacy laws and compliance risks. However, opt-in tracking can limit marketing visibility by reducing the amount of collected data.

2. Delay WebTag firing through a tag manager

Another approach is to use Google Tag Manager (or similar solutions) to delay tag firing until a predefined action, or “trigger,” occurs.

For example:

• The tag can be set to fire only after the visitor has remained on the website for a certain period (e.g., 10-15 seconds). The median site visit length across all pages upon which the 6sense WebTag is installed is 14 seconds.
• The tag can be triggered only after a visitor engages with certain page elements (e.g., clicking a call-to-action button or scrolling down a page).
• The tag can stay inactive until the visitor acknowledges the cookie banner (e.g., simply continuing to browse the site).
• Or the tag can be set up to activate immediately.

The method of delaying tag firing provides marketers with greater flexibility, allowing them to capture meaningful insights while providing visitors time to be informed of tracking before any data collection occurs.

3. Cookie banner language

Once an organization determines when it wants the 6sense WebTag to fire, then it will determine how to provide clear notice about data collection.

Although you should confirm with your privacy and/or legal team on the wording for your site and specific use case, some examples of cookie banner language might read:

“By continuing to use our website, you acknowledge and accept the use by us and our partners and service providers of tracking and analytics technology, such as cookies, pixels, JavaScripts, web tags, and beacons.”

Alternatively, some organizations prefer to reference their full privacy policy:

“We and our service providers use tracking and analytics technology such as cookies, pixels, JavaScripts, web tags and beacons to view and retain your site interactions. By continuing to use our website you agree to such uses as further described in our Privacy Policy.”

Regardless of whether a business chooses to configure the 6sense WebTag to require explicit opt-in or a different trigger before firing, providing a notice about data usage helps make data collection transparent.

Addressing concerns about CIPA compliance

One key area of concern among marketers is CIPA’s “Trap and Trace” provision.

The 6sense WebTag provides multiple options that customers can choose to deploy such as: (1) configuring a tag manager to delay tag fire until triggered, or (2) requiring explicit consent, depending on a business’s risk tolerance and compliance priorities.

Other general considerations may include posting a clear privacy notice and/or banner that corresponds to applicable compliance requirements.

For any additional questions, feel free to contact 6sense’s legal team at [email protected].