Gannett

Overview

Gannett is one of the largest US media companies, operating the USA Today Network — a portfolio of hundreds of local and regional digital news properties alongside the national USA Today brand. Its websites monetise audiences primarily through programmatic display advertising, and its digital infrastructure deploys a layered stack of analytics, audience measurement, and ad tech scripts. Gannett's digital advertising business relies on real-time bidding auctions that share visitor data with dozens of demand-side platforms and ad exchanges on every page load.

What This Script Does

Gannett digital properties load a combination of first-party analytics scripts and multiple third-party advertising tags. The exact script inventory varies by property, but a representative Gannett news page typically loads:

Analytics and audience measurement:

• Adobe Analytics (assets.adobedtm.com) — Page view tracking, content engagement metrics, scroll depth, session duration, and navigation path analysis. Sets first-party s_cc, s_sq, and s_vi cookies (2-year persistent) for visitor identification and session stitching.
• Comscore — Audience measurement beacons that report aggregate audience reach to advertising buyers.
• Chartbeat — Realtime content analytics tracking engaged time, scroll depth, and concurrent visitor counts.

Programmatic advertising:

• Google Ad Manager / DoubleClick — Primary ad server. Loads from securepubads.g.doubleclick.net. Sets IDE and NID third-party cookies for ad frequency capping and conversion tracking across Google's advertising network.
• Prebid.js header bidding wrapper — Orchestrates real-time bidding auctions by sharing visitor identifiers (cookie syncs) with multiple demand-side platforms in parallel before the page finishes loading.
• Index Exchange, Rubicon/Magnite, OpenX, Criteo — Demand partners that receive bid requests containing hashed identifiers, browser fingerprint signals, and inferred audience segment data.

Data collected per page load: IP address (used for geolocation), User-Agent string, page URL and referrer, time on page, scroll depth, and any audience segment identifiers resolved from cookie syncs or identity resolution services.

Consent & Compliance

Consent category: Analytics / Marketing

Under GDPR and ePrivacy, the advertising and analytics stack on Gannett properties requires prior opt-in consent before loading. The combination of persistent identification cookies (Adobe Analytics s_vi, Google IDE) and real-time cookie syncing with multiple ad partners constitutes processing of personal data for profiling and targeted advertising. Consent is required under Article 6(1)(a) and the ePrivacy Directive's cookie rules.

Under CCPA/CPRA, Gannett's sharing of visitor identifiers with programmatic ad partners constitutes a "sale" and "sharing" of personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising. Gannett operates a "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" mechanism on its properties.

Gannett participates in the IAB TCF framework. Applicable purposes include Purpose 1 (storage), Purpose 2 (basic ad selection), Purpose 3 (personalised ad selection), Purpose 4 (ad measurement), Purpose 7 (measurement), and Special Feature 1 (precise geolocation).

Should You Block This Without Consent?

Yes. Gannett scripts set persistent tracking cookies, participate in real-time bidding auctions, and share visitor identifiers with ad partners. They must be blocked until the visitor grants analytics and marketing consent.