Why do insurers use trackers?

Why do insurers have digital trackers on their website? Fair question! Unfortunately, that’s how the internet works (in its current state, anyway). Marketing Brew's Ryan Barwick shined some light on the data healthcare companies are collecting.

Blue Cross Blue Shield has deployed several trackers on its website, according to the web extension Ghostery, a tool that can tell you what kind of technology web pages are using.

• Ghostery returned a list of trackers from Twitter, Google, and LinkedIn.

Though we don’t know specifically what kind of data is being transferred, these pixels are usually installed to help marketing departments. Tracking pixels, for the uninitiated, are hidden or embedded graphics that can give a more complete picture of a customer’s journey, what they’ve clicked on, if they’ve searched for something specific, if they’ve put something in a shopping cart, or whether an advertisement drove them to, say, Blue Cross Blue Shield’s homepage.

For example, if an insurer wants to show that its ads are working, it can use a pixel to determine that it was their ad that got someone to finally sign up for health insurance, not Susan in HR.

Trackers are ubiquitous, but experts and consumers have raised serious questions about the data that’s shared between companies. For example, investigative reporting outlet The Markup found that hospitals shared sensitive information with Facebook through the Meta pixel. 😬 And just this month, Indianapolis-based Community Health Network reported that pixels may have affected 1.5 million of its patients.

For more, read our interview with sociologist Mary F.E. Ebeling, who wrote a book about the collection of sensitive health data.