A Cookieless World
What is a Cookie?
Cookies are text files with small pieces of data that help identify your computer as you use a specific network. There’s also a specific type of cookie called an HTTP cookie that is used to track a user to try and improve their web browsing experience. This is an interesting concept because although it does improve your browsing experience, it also leaves you vulnerable to the openness of the web. This is why when you enter a new website, it often gives you the option to accept cookies or not. It’s important to understand that while it benefits you to accept, there can also be consequences. Adobe recently posted an example that I was a fan of that stated “let’s say you have a popular home improvement company and you want to start marketing your home and garden products through digital advertising. To figure out who to market to, maybe you purchase data from an external vendor to identify users who engage with DIY content and who might be most interested in your products. This data is often attached to third-party cookies and can be used to build a user segment with this information. Then, based on this segment, you can give a personalized offer to visitors to your site to these users who engage with DIY content”.
What do Cookies do?
As previously stated, cookies are often used to track a user and their history to give them a more optimized viewing experience. This raises a popular question, what exactly do cookies store? The answer is:
Account usernames and passwords
Your email address
Prior purchases you made
Items you viewed
Your preferred settings and themes
These are a few things you need to keep in mind when you decide to accept cookies on a specific website. Although you get a better experience, you are sacrificing a lot of personal information. That’s a decision you need to feel comfortable making.
The Difference Between a First-Party Cookie and Third-Party Cookie
First-party cookies are stored directly by the website or domain you visit. These are believed to be the most helpful for users because of the direct connection between you and that specific website/domain. On the other hand, third-party cookies are set by a website other than the one you are on. An example I read would be liking a post on Facebook and creating a cookie that identifies your behaviors to Facebook without your permission. Third-party issues are the main target currently for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). They are what’s causing all of the current policy changes we see happening. Businesses have become very reliant on the concept of cookies and they’re going to have to learn how to adapt based on new legislation coming forward. It poses the question, How will marketers respond to the elimination of third-party cookies?
Representation of Google Chrome ratifying cookies
Preparation for a Cookieless World
By the end of the year 2023, Google has announced its plans to stop using third-party cookies on its Chrome browser. Cookies are something that digital marketers have relied on for decades so it’s important for them to have a new plan set. “Marketers should expect substantial and sustained disruption to digital advertising to last through the first half of 2023, or longer. It will likely take many years for a stable environment that balances standards-based data-driven advertising and consumer privacy to emerge,” said Eric Schmitt, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner. Marketers must first prepare for sustained disruption. By getting rid of cookies, this basically means that marketers have to start from scratch. It is their job to either redirect or reinvent the idea of cookies and how to properly utilize them. Next, they have to rethink ad measurement practices. The demise of cookies will do nothing but add more challenges to the current digital ad measurement. Teams will have to come up with a brand new guideline and strategy to try and work towards developing to the change. Lastly, they will have to get comfortable with “walled garden world” scenarios. A walled garden is an ad platform where the publisher handles all the buying, serving, tracking, and reporting. Marketers are going to have to learn to prioritize their investments and be ready to increase those allocations to major media such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. It is expected that there will be an increased number of direct media buys within platforms while a decrease in cross-publisher programmatic display.
A link to my video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PiM_a7RFLI
Links to my other articles:
https://pursue-persuade.squarespace.com/home-1/2022/3/31/tiktoktheworldsfastestgrowingsocialmedia
https://pursue-persuade.squarespace.com/students/will-laplace
Sources:
https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/cookies
https://www.kevel.com/blog/what-are-walled-gardens/
https://business.adobe.com/glossary/cookieless.html
https://uk.norton.com/norton-blog/2015/07/what_you_need_tokno.html
https://www.fastcompany.com/90664099/a-future-without-cookies