We Don't Need No Stinkin' Cookies! (Or Do We?)
Best cookie practices, when deletion is cause for concern, and what the future holds for cookies.
Best cookie practices, when deletion is cause for concern, and what the future holds for cookies.
Consumers have cookie fever, and they’re deleting cookies faster than ever. This has a lot of advertisers very concerned. Many studies have reported on the phenomenon, and all agree users are deleting cookies. What they don’t agree on is how many users actually delete them. Most studies say more users are deleting more cookies now, and the trend will accelerate.
Cookie deletion has mostly to do with confusion about what cookies are and how they’re used. Anti-spyware applications, such as Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware and a few others, are the biggest offenders in the cookie war. They provoke cookie fear to drive product sales.
In light of cookie deletion, what are the best cookies practices? And what common advertising and publishing practices are most likely to be affected when cookies are deleted? Let’s review three best practices commonly used by experienced ad agencies. Also, how to discern when cookie deletion is a concern… and when it isn’t.
Agencies prefer to track lifetime value with their own tools. It helps them demonstrate the value of their work to the advertiser, and they needn’t rely on their client to provide this data (which could be a conflict of interest).
Most sophisticated advertisers measure lifetime value themselves, either with internal or Web analytics tools. Both typically use first-party cookies, rather than third, so they are deleted manually — not by anti-spyware applications.
There’s no reason agencies can’t use one of these in addition to their 3PASs. But they make life a bit more complicated, and some advertisers don’t want their agencies to have that much data on how their sites work.
What does the future hold? Will cookie deletion become a bigger issue? Yes, according to studies on more sophisticated Web users. Though these users understand cookies aren’t dangerous, they delete them because they don’t want to be tracked. We need a technology to replace cookies within the next few years, or much of the value we’ve built will crumble alongside the cookie.
A cookie replacement had better be consumer-friendly, not some underhanded method of tracking against users’ will. It must be transparent, fair, and honorable — or we’re right back where we started.
If this issue interests you, join the folks at Safecount.org, as I have. Let’s work together to solve the problem.