Cookie consent is considered a solved problem on most WordPress sites.
There’s a banner, an opt-in flow, and a privacy policy that’s been reviewed at least once. From a compliance checklist perspective, everything looks fine.
Yet many site owners notice a frustrating pattern when they look at mobile traffic from Facebook or Instagram: users are asked for consent again and again, sometimes on every visit, even though they already accepted it earlier.
This isn’t a cosmetic annoyance. It has real consequences for conversion rates, campaign performance, and user trust. And crucially, it’s usually not caused by GDPR requirements, but by how in-app browsers actually work.
Let’s walk through what’s really happening and why tools like Must-Have Cookie take a different approach.
In-app browsers are not broken — they’re just different
When someone clicks a link inside Facebook or Instagram, the page does not open in Safari or Chrome. It opens inside a platform-controlled webview, often called an in-app browser.
From the user’s perspective, this still feels like “the browser.” Technically, however, it behaves very differently.
A common misconception is that in-app browsers are more aggressive about privacy — that they constantly wipe cookies or clear localStorage. In practice, this is not the core issue.
The real problem lies in webview lifecycle boundaries.
Each time a link is opened, the app may create a new webview instance. When that happens, the previous browser context is no longer attached to the page. Cookies, session state, and even storage that still exists at the app level may simply not be accessible to the new instance.
From the website’s point of view, this looks indistinguishable from a brand-new visitor:
no readable cookies, no accessible consent state, no reliable continuity between visits.
Nothing necessarily expired or was deleted.
The storage just isn’t reattached.
Why traditional consent logic fails in this environment
Most consent management platforms are built around a very reasonable assumption: browsers persist state across sessions.
The logic is usually simple: if a consent cookie exists, don’t show the banner, if it doesn’t, show it.
This works perfectly in standard browsers, where cookies and storage reliably survive tab closes, app switches, and time gaps.
In an in-app browser, however, a new webview often means a new execution context. Even if the user accepted consent moments earlier, the site cannot reliably read that decision again. The CMP does exactly what it was designed to do and shows the banner again.
Technically correct behavior, poor user experience.
For the user, the site feels forgetful.
For the business, it creates unnecessary friction at the worst possible moment.
Why this matters beyond user experience
Repeated consent prompts don’t just irritate users, they actively hurt performance.
Most paid social traffic arrives through in-app browsers. These users are already one step away from bouncing, especially on mobile. Introducing an unnecessary interruption right after the click increases abandonment and reduces the chance that visitors ever reach the content they came for.
This shows up as:
- higher bounce rates on mobile landing pages,
- lower completion rates on forms and product views,
- weaker Meta Ads performance despite unchanged targeting.
And it’s important to be clear here: GDPR does not require re-asking for consent simply because a new webview was created. If the user already made a valid choice, repeatedly forcing that decision is not a legal necessity — it’s a technical side effect.
Where many CMPs fall short
Most consent tools treat all browsers as equal. They don’t distinguish between full browsers and embedded webviews, and they assume that client-side persistence behaves consistently everywhere.
When that assumption fails, the system has no nuance. The consent state appears missing, so the banner reappears. Again. And again.
The issue isn’t that these tools are careless. It’s that they’re designed around a browser model that doesn’t fully apply to in-app environments.
Designing consent logic for in-app realities
Must-Have Cookie approaches this problem from a different angle. Instead of assuming persistence, it assumes instability at session boundaries — especially in known in-app browser contexts like Facebook and Instagram.
The plugin explicitly recognizes these environments and adapts its consent logic accordingly. Rather than relying on a single cookie and treating every new webview as a fresh legal decision, it applies persistence logic that survives typical in-app session resets.
The goal is not to suppress consent or bypass user choice.
The goal is to avoid re-asking when a valid decision already exists, even if the underlying browser context has changed.
In practice, this means fewer unnecessary prompts without compromising compliance. The consent remains explicit, auditable, and transparent – but it doesn’t punish the user for technical limitations they can’t control.
What this changes in practice
For users, the experience feels calmer and more consistent. The site doesn’t repeatedly interrupt them with the same question, and trust improves as a result.
For marketers, landing pages perform better. Especially on paid social traffic, removing unnecessary friction leads to more users actually reaching the content they clicked for.
From a legal standpoint, nothing is weakened. The consent logic still respects GDPR principles; it simply avoids equating a technical webview reset with a new consent obligation.
Closing thoughts
Good consent management isn’t about showing banners as often as possible. It’s about asking at the right time, remembering the answer, and stepping aside once the decision is made.
In-app browsers are no longer edge cases, they are a core part of modern mobile traffic. Treating them like full browsers leads to unnecessary friction and lost conversions.
When consent logic is designed around how these environments actually behave, the result is better user experience, better campaign performance, and compliance that feels invisible rather than intrusive.
