Rethinking the hidden cost of ‘free’ analytics
Interview with Karsten Rendemann, CEO of Piwik PRO and Cookie Information
Regulators and customers want transparency in how online behaviour is tracked, while geopolitics raises questions about dependence on US digital services. Karsten Rendemann, CEO of Piwik PRO, argues ethics can now outperform ‘free’ analytics.
Web analytics runs on a bargain: data for insight. ‘Many companies are not aware that the price they pay is that a big‑tech company gets the data from their websites and apps,’ says Karsten Rendemann, CEO of Piwik PRO and its parent company Cookie Information in Denmark. ‘That data is then used to profile people and exploited commercially.’
An ethical origin story
Piwik PRO was built to make that trade‑off optional. ‘There should be an analytics tool where the company that owns the website or app gets all the data and nobody else – unless you want them to,’ Karsten Rendemann says.
Privacy and a data‑ethical perspective was the foundation from the beginning.’ That philosophy was reinforced in 2023 when Cookie Information acquired Piwik PRO. ‘By combining consent management and analytics, organizations can prove that every data flow has a legal basis.”
Tracking that respects the ‘no’
The platform is designed to function even when users decline cookies. ‘If people do not give consent, anonymous statistics are still collected,’ Karsten Rendemann explains. ‘We can understand intent with very high accuracy, without knowing who the person is.’ That distinction still delivers results. ‘One large US healthcare provider saw a 40% increase in patient referrals,’ he says. ‘The website could immediately show visitors what they were most interested in that day.’ When users do opt in, their personal data can be used in a fully transparent and compliant way.
Why the biggest, most regulated moved first
Such capabilities resonated first with organizations under strict oversight. ‘Our ideal customer profiles are regulated industries such as healthcare, finance and the public sector,’ Karsten Rendemann says. In the US, healthcare adoption accelerated because under HIPAA, many organizations are not allowed to use big‑tech analytics in the same way. In Europe, public institutions often have a policy that they do not want to use Google Analytics at all, while private firms tend to run both systems. ‘When we asked around 1,000 of the world’s largest organizations, almost all of them used us in parallel.’
Ethics improves attribution
What began as an ethical stance has delivered unexpected performance gains. ‘Because privacy is built into the data model, we collect around four times as much usable data,’ Karsten Rendemann says. ‘With traditional tools you can often link only about a third of website traffic to actual sales.’ With Piwik PRO, customers can attribute between 98 and 99% of behaviour to concrete outcomes.
AI changes decision-making
AI has amplified that advantage. ‘Companies no longer want a monthly report created by an analytics department,’ Karsten Rendemann points out. ‘They want to feed the data into AI systems so anyone can ask questions directly.’ Those questions range from campaign performance to design changes and can be asked during rather than after. ‘That completely changes how decisions are made,’ he says.
From privacy to sovereignty
In Europe, the debate has expanded further. ‘Digital sovereignty has become a serious concern,’ Karsten Rendemann explains. ‘Companies want solutions that protect them if access to US‑operated services is restricted for political reasons.’ He points to recent disruptions. ‘We have seen major institutions lose access to essential services overnight.’
A culture built on predictability
The internal values mirror the product stance. ‘Trust is closely linked to predictability and transparency which are key for us,’ Karsten Rendemann says. ‘Our goal is to make ethical martech more efficient than the standard tools offered by big tech.’ With around 200 employees and annual growth of roughly 20%, he concludes, ‘the demand we see is genuine, not ideological.’