The hidden cost of legacy CMPs: Why Ketch won’t compromise your web performance

Picture this: your marketing team has spent months fine-tuning your website for optimal performance. Every image compressed, every script tightened. Your site speed metrics are looking great—until it’s time to add privacy into the mix. With eight new U.S. state privacy laws taking effect in 2025 alone, you implement a Consent Management Platform (CMP) to stay compliant.

And suddenly, your performance metrics start to slip.

This scenario plays out across industries every day. As businesses navigate the complex web of global privacy regulations, many discover an unexpected consequence: their compliance solution is silently sabotaging their website performance. Traditional CMPs often introduce delays in page loading, increasing bounce rates and eroding conversion rates.

Many digital teams feel forced to choose between regulatory compliance and optimal site performance. But this is a false choice.

Privacy compliance doesn't have to compromise speed. When implemented thoughtfully, privacy tools can seamlessly integrate into your digital experience without users noticing any performance impact. Ketch's data permissioning platform was built with this performance-first philosophy, ensuring businesses can both protect user data and maintain the fast, frictionless experience their customers expect.

Let's explore why website speed remains critical for digital success, the hidden technical pitfalls in many legacy CMPs, and how modern privacy technology like Ketch can deliver compliance without compromising performance.

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Why website speed and performance matter for businesses

Website performance is a direct driver of business success. A slow website doesn’t just frustrate users—it affects search rankings, conversion rates, and ultimately revenue.

• Google prioritizes fast-loading sites in search rankings. If your site is slow, it may rank lower, reducing visibility and organic traffic.
• User expectations are higher than ever. A study by Google found that when a page load time increases from 1 to 3 seconds, the probability of a bounce jumps 32%.
• Speed impacts revenue. Every additional second of page load can lower conversion rate by up to 20%.

A Deloitte Digital study, "Milliseconds Make Millions", found that a 0.1 second improvement in mobile site speed increased conversion rates by 8% for retail sites and 10% for travel sites.

Businesses across industries—especially in ecommerce, retail, media, and publishing—can’t afford to ignore website performance. Slow-loading pages translate to lost sales, missed ad revenue, and lower audience engagement.

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Cases in point: how web performance impacts the retail and media industries

Retail, D2C, and ecommerce: every second counts

For online retailers and direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, website performance isn't just a technical metric—it's a direct driver of revenue. In the hyper-competitive digital marketplace, where shoppers have endless alternatives just a click away, the difference between a sale and an abandonment often comes down to milliseconds.

• Cart abandonment rates increase as load times rise. 53% of mobile users abandon a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load
• Customers associate speed with trust. A slow-loading ecommerce page creates friction, making shoppers hesitant to complete a purchase
• Major retailers prioritize performance. Amazon reported that a 100ms delay in load time could cost them $1.6 billion in lost revenue annually

Read more: 3 major privacy challenges for retail & ecommerce brands

Websites that load slowly cost retailers $2.6 billion U.S. dollars in sales each year

- Website User Experience Statistics, Forbes

Media and publishers: the cost of slow-loading ads

For digital publishers, performance isn't merely about user experience—it's the foundation of their entire business model. In an industry where revenue depends on balancing content delivery, ad impressions, and user engagement, every millisecond of load time represents potential lost income. The modern publisher faces a three-way challenge: keeping readers engaged, advertisers satisfied, and search algorithms appeased.

• A one-second delay can reduce page views by 11%, decreasing overall engagement and impressions
• Slow pages lead to ad viewability issues. Many advertisers won’t pay for impressions if an ad doesn’t fully load before a user leaves
• Google penalizes slow-loading publishers. Websites with long load times rank lower, leading to reduced organic traffic

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47% of users won’t wait longer than two seconds for a website to load and 40% of users will leave a site if it takes more than three seconds to load.

- Website User Experience Statistics, Forbes

In both industries, speed is critical—and yet, many businesses unknowingly hurt their own performance with ineffective privacy compliance solutions.

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The hidden problem with some CMPs

Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) play an essential role in privacy compliance, helping businesses manage user consent and comply with regulations like GDPR and CCPA.

However, some CMPs—especially legacy solutions—introduce serious performance issues:

1. Synchronous script loading: many CMPs load JavaScript in a way that blocks the rest of the page from rendering, causing frustrating delays
2. Large script bundles: some platforms force every user to download massive JavaScript files, even if they don’t need all the functionality
3. Excessive data requests: CMPs that retrieve unnecessary external scripts can bloat page load times, impacting both desktop and mobile users

For example, in tests of OneTrust’s CMP, we found that it loads synchronously in certain configurations, meaning that the website pauses until the CMP finishes loading—a major bottleneck in performance.

This results in:

• Slower initial page loads, frustrating users and reducing conversions
• More data consumption, which is especially problematic for mobile users with limited data plans
• Delayed interactivity, harming engagement on ecommerce sites and media platforms alike

This performance hit is not necessary—and Ketch proves it.

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How Ketch is designed for speed and performance

At Ketch, we believe that privacy compliance shouldn’t come at the cost of website performance. That’s why we engineered the Ketch Smart Tag with speed and efficiency in mind, ensuring that businesses can meet privacy regulations without slowing down their websites.

A performance-first approach: the 3 pillars of Ketch’s Smart Tag

Unlike legacy Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) that introduce rendering delays and increase page load times, Ketch’s architecture is designed to minimize impact and maximize performance.

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1. Deferred script execution

The Ketch script loads asynchronously, preventing it from blocking critical assets and ensuring that webpages render without unnecessary delays.

The defer attribute allows the script to execute only after the entire document has been parsed, ensuring that essential page content loads first.

2. Global infrastructure & caching

With globally distributed points of presence, Ketch ensures that users experience low latency no matter their location.

Advanced caching mechanisms further optimize performance by reusing previously fetched resources, reducing server requests and improving speed.

3. Optimized javaScript bundles

By using just-in-time JavaScript, Ketch loads only the essential scripts when they’re needed, minimizing data transfers and improving efficiency.

“Ketch has been a true partner in understanding the complexity of privacy alongside our marketing goals. Working with Ketch feels like a partnership, not a one-off transaction.” 

- Jay DeGooyer, Chief Legal Officer, Singlestore

Real-world performance gains

Ketch’s performance-optimized architecture delivers a significantly faster and smoother user experience:

✅ Pages load faster compared to traditional CMPs

✅ Improved Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and First Contentful Paint (FCP): content becomes visible noticeably sooner, improving user engagement

✅ Reduced Total Blocking Time (TBT): interactive elements are ready much quicker, allowing users to engage without delay

Unlike legacy CMPs that prioritize resource loading in ways that disrupt the critical rendering path, Ketch ensures that user-facing content appears instantly, while compliance functions operate seamlessly in the background. 

"We help our customers uphold privacy requirements while also upholding the web page performance they have worked so hard to achieve."

- Sam Alexander, Lead Engineer at Ketch

This approach significantly improves key performance metrics such as First Contentful Paint (FCP), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and Total Blocking Time (TBT)—all crucial for a fast, responsive, and SEO-friendly website.

To explain, definitions of these terms that impact performance: 

• First Contentful Paint (FCP): the time it takes for the first piece of content (text, image, etc.) to render in the browser after the user starts loading the page
• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): the time it takes for the largest visual element on the page to be fully rendered, indicating when the main content has loaded
• Total Blocking Time (TBT): the time during which the main thread is blocked, preventing user input (such as clicks or typing) from being processed during page load

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How Ketch compares to legacy privacy solutions

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Real-world testing of legacy solutions exposed render-blocking issues that delay page load times. This is exactly what Ketch solves with our performance-optimized design.

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Faster pages. Better compliance. Higher revenue.

The digital landscape has evolved beyond accepting compromises between regulatory compliance and website performance. Across industries—from retail to publishing—even small delays in page loading directly translate to lost engagement, diminished trust, and reduced revenue.

Performance isn't merely a technical concern; it's the foundation supporting every aspect of the digital experience. When a CMP adds unnecessary weight to your pages, it erodes your team's careful optimizations, weakens your competitive position, and quietly diminishes your bottom line.

The good news? This trade-off is unnecessary. Modern solutions like Ketch have reimagined how privacy compliance tools integrate with your digital properties, making it possible to:

✅ Ensure privacy compliance without hurting conversion rates
✅ Improve SEO rankings with faster load speeds
✅ Reduce bounce rates and keep users engaged
✅ Maximize ad revenue with improved page performance

Ready to experience a better, faster CMP? Request a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.