Cookies and their future
Cookies have been at the heart of internet advertising for years. However, tides are turning, companies are trying to find alternative ways to advertise. eBay’s innovative release of cookie-less advertising in the EU is one of a series of innovations opening a door many thought was locked. This article looks to shed light on what cookies are along with providing insight on the future of internet advertising.
What are Cookies?
Internet cookies have been ever-present since the early years of the Web, they are little packets of information stored on our own computers which identify your computer to the website. There are different types of cookies as described bellow.
| Type | Description | Example use case |
| Session cookies | Only stored on your computer for the times that you are in that session – they expire once the session ends. | If I add a specific pair of shoes to my shopping basket, the website knows what to put into the basket when I click checkout. |
| Persistent cookies | Intermediary cookies which help the website remember specific user preferences and are also used by website owners to analyse traffic and user behaviour – they remain in your computer even after you have closed your web browser. | Used to remember language, territory, settings and even log in tokens so one does not have to reinput this every time they visit a page. |
| First party cookies | Cookies stored in your computer directly by the website you are visiting. | Any of the cases described above. |
| Third party cookies | Cookies stored in your computer by a third party, usually by an advertising or analytics firm | The website you visit allows third parties to identify aspects of your browsing behaviour and save their own cookies. Based on these cookies, when you access another site with adverts, the advertiser knows what adverts to target you with enticing you to buy things that you may not even know you wanted/needed. |
Cookies are used almost universally now. They are used for both the benefit of the consumer and the developer. However, not all consumers realise their movements across the web are being tracked constantly. Every Google search, every Facebook Like every twitter retweet is logged and used to analyse what ads to show you. It is used to build up a profile of what you do on the web, where one is then treated as a pure commodity and your data is sold multiple times to different advertisers.
In the EU, GDPR law and ePrivacy Directive (the Cookie Law) cover the majority of legislation which is associated with cookies. In the 3 months after GDPR was implemented the number of third-party cookies dropped 22% on European news websites. This is a resounding success and encouraged law makers to push on with the replacement for the ePrivacy Directive – the ePrivacy Regulation (ePR). The ePR will attempt to prevent digital fingerprinting which allows advertisers to directly infer the identity of a person due to cookies. Analytical cookies will still be allowed as it is essential for websites to understand their traffic and how to optimise their own website.
The future
eBay have recently announced that they will be releasing their new Advanced Audience Technology to replace marketing cookies on their website. eBay will be using user IDs to target adverts at specific users. This negates the need for cookies as the user ID is linked to the account and eBay can see what every single person who is logged in is looking at, what they bought and what they have sold. According to eBay this removes the need for DMP (data management platform) integration allowing the system to run faster and provide more accurate matches by up to 300%.
Google have committed to ending third party cookies in Chrome by 2022, a major step as Chrome currently holds a 65% market share on internet browsers. This has already been committed to by Safari and Edge meaning that in a few years time the vast majority of internet browsers will not be supporting third party cookies. The big question is how on earth will internet advertising work?
There are a few techniques which will mean the change to cookieless advertising will seem fairly seamless.
| Approach | Description |
| Contextual Advertising | Adverts that will be shown are targeted to the content you are looking at. Similar to magazines, TV advertisements and Newspapers, this method is fairly broad but does do the ‘job’ |
| Universal IDs | Identifier created by a consortium to provide a shared identity to identify the user across the ad supply chain without syncing cookies. It isn’t restricted to third-party cookies – first-party data (CRM) and offline data can be used to create universal IDs. |
| Clean Rooms | Data clean rooms are places where tech giants share aggregated rather than customer-level data with advertisers. Using its own first-party data the advertiser should theoretically be able to see the duplicated reach it gets across the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter. None of that aggregated data leaves the clean room. |
Conclusion
Marketing cookies are on the way out. With all the major browsers banning them, regulators attempting to legislate against them and consumers starting to wise up on them the advertising sector needs to look to an alternate future.
The solutions are out there, however, it is up to your business to go out and grab those opportunities to get ahead before others do.
Sources: techopedia.com, cookie-script.com, reutersinstitue.politics.ox.ac.uk, gdpr.eu, cookiepro.com, bbc.com, linklaters.com, eur-lex.europa.eu, noburuworld.com, digiday.com, ebayadvertising.com, statcounter.com, digiday.com, headerbidding.co. All accessed [04/08/2020]