Learn how to deal with cookieless tracking if your company does ecommerce or gathers client data online.
What you’ll discover:
What exactly are cookies?
What is the difference between first-party cookies and third-party cookies?
What is cookieless tracking?
What is the process of cookieless advertising?
What does a cookie-free world imply for marketers?
What does cookie-free tracking imply for customers?
Cookies have been used by website owners and digital marketers to gather visitor data in order to enhance website functioning, customize content, and target advertising. Consumers are mostly unaware of the data collecting and digital monitoring that takes place behind their browsers. Yet, as consumer privacy and data protection laws are passed and technology progresses, companies of all sizes may be required to adjust their policies and practices when it comes to collecting visitor data and utilizing that data to target and customize marketing activities to those visitors. What cookies are, how they operate, and what impact cookieless monitoring may have on consumers, website owners, and marketers are all covered in the following sections.
Table of Contents
What exactly are cookies?
Cookies are little text files sent to your device by a website through a web browser such as Chrome, Firefox, or Internet Explorer. When you visit a website, the server that hosts the website may install a cookie on your browser so that it may identify your device in the future. When you return to the page, the server looks for that cookie in order to remember you and monitor your behavior over time. Cookies in action include items left in a shopping cart on an e-commerce site or a website that automatically generates your username from a previous login.
Cookies are further classified into two classes based on how website owners and advertising utilize them. The categories differentiate between the length of time cookies remain on a device (session vs persistent) and who sets the cookie on the device (first party vs third party). Third-party cookies are seen to be the most invading of consumer privacy.
What is the difference between first-party cookies and third-party cookies?
First-party cookies are created by website owners to monitor user activity on their own sites. First-party cookies are often used by web developers and marketers to study how users navigate their website in order to enhance the quality of their website or the adverts they deliver to visitors. Third-party cookies are placed on a user’s device by advertising networks that do not control the specific website, such as Google. Both first-party and third-party cookies may either be deleted immediately when a user leaves a website or at the conclusion of a user’s session, or the cookies can linger (or persist) on the user’s computer until the user clears them.
Third-party cookies are often persistent, which means they reside on a user’s device and gather data to monitor website user activity across various websites. Consider how your Google search for last-minute flights shows as an advertising for inexpensive tickets on the page you visit following the search. Third-party cookies are used in this manner by advertising platforms to reach audiences.
What exactly is cookieless tracking?
Cookieless (or anonymous) tracking employs scripts that are executed when a user accesses a website. As the script collects streaming information and data, it tells the browser to transfer it to another server for analytics and storage rather than storing it in a cookie on the user’s device.
Some individuals may use the phrase cookieless tracking to refer to tracking that does not allow third-party cookies. First-party cookies will continue to be feasible for website owners to gather and keep user data with the correct Privacy Policies and user permission.
What is the process of cookieless advertising?
By removing cookies and using scripts, marketers and website owners may continue to gather and store what activity happens during a visitor’s user session without knowing the demographics and characteristics of who visits the website. Cookieless advertising also lowers user tracking across numerous websites.
Cookieless advertising implies that website owners and ad purchasers will no longer be able to access sensitive user data obtained through third-party cookies. Instead, marketers will make judgments based on less information while convincing visitors to consent to first-party data acquisition.
What does a cookie-free world imply for marketers?
A cookieless future requires marketers to reconsider audience segmentation, user retargeting, and sales attribution without relying on user data.
Segmentation of the audience
Marketers will most likely shift away from data-driven consumer segmentation and toward contextual advertising. While it may not provide the same level of personalisation and optimization, contextual advertising is more conventional and predates high-tech monitoring. It displays advertisements on websites with similarly connected content. An advertiser selling high-end bakeware, for example, may purchase ad slots on a baking blogger’s website.
User segmentation
The inability of marketers to employ third-party cookies for 1:1 retargeting will be one of the most important developments. Ads for particular items and services may follow a user across internet properties via retargeting. Advertisers cannot utilize retargeting to reach the same user on another website unless third-party cookies are used.
Attribution of sales
Before completing a purchase, website visitors may interact with a brand multiple times. Third-party cookies aided in the monitoring of website activity and user purchases. Marketers will lose data on sales conversions.
What does cookie-free tracking imply for customers?
Instead of giving businesses unlimited control, cookieless tracking gives customers greater insight into – and control over — their data. As a result, consumers will take a more active role in protecting their own personal data.
Consumers may anticipate an increase in the amount of website requests requesting them to authorize tracking cookies on their devices if cookies are not used. This allows customers to choose the exact objectives for which they want websites to use browser cookies (e.g. improved website performance, greater personalization, as well as advertising and promotions).
Lastly, website owners will try to communicate with customers in order to acquire data via additional first-party touchpoints such as email, SMS, and push notifications. Although first-party data gathering is legal, GDPR, CCPA, and other rules govern its usage.
