A New Cookie for a New Era: Saying Goodbye to Third Party Cookies

The big news in the market research industry, but especially when it comes to technology solutions, is what to do now that Google and many other platforms will no longer be supporting third party cookies. Here’s what you need to know about what’s happening with third party cookies and what this means for companies and marketing strategies that used to rely on this tracking data.

What Are Third Party Cookies?

Third party cookies are the bits of tracking data that companies use in many applications, but most generally, to track web behavior. These cookies can be used to provide targeted ads to visitors to websites and affect what users see and experience based on other pieces of their browsing behavior. Third party cookies are especially useful in tracking where visitors have gone before, and where else they frequent on the internet to know the best domains to target with ads in order to increase purchasing. In this manner, many companies will contract tech companies specifically designed for this tracking of potential customers, which is where sharing and using this data gets messy, in terms of data privacy and security.

To be referred to as third party cookies, it has to be data collected by an outside organization on the visitors and users of a particular website or service. This data is being collected without the user’s knowledge and without their consent, which makes it highly suspect for any worried Internet users and for many experience and comfortable users, as well. A recent Pew report found that 79% of Americans are concerned about the way companies use their data. And from another study, forty-one percent of U.S. consumers regularly delete cookies, and 30% have installed an adblocker. These statistics show the public’s shift towards distrusting tracking data that is happening without their consent.

Why Third Party Cookies Are Being Deprecated

It is not new that third-party cookies are starting to be reduced in their functionality and universal tracking abilities. Multiple browsers have created switches for turning off third-party cookies from tracking browsing, such as incognito or private browsing modes as well as browser settings so that cookies aren’t stored based on Internet use. Each bit of information about a person’s browsing history, by itself, it just a point of data, but put it all together, you get a full but fragmented picture of a person’s internet use, without them having consented to be tracked in such a fashion.

The use of third-party cookies for tracking visitors and their behavior to better target them with marketing walks a thin line between being effective at marketing and infringing on privacy rights. In the age of GDPR and similar privacy and digital security legislation, it’s important that users of the internet feel safe using it. And with the continued use of third-party cookies for tracking, and security breaches of many companies who store personal information of their customers, that security and safety is more important than ever.

What To Do Without Third Party Cookies

To not rely on third party data and the concerns therein, our solutions at OSG Analytics collect and use first party cookies and data. This is data that is clearly consented to, by the user, for collection and analysis. And in this secure and regulated manner, we can gather the data we need to understand our clients’ customers and drive better business decisions. By gathering this data directly from the users, we can better understand their decisions as internet users and potential shoppers and users of our clients’ products and services.

And this way, we can protect their privacy and security in only tracking the data relevant to our work, and still work towards providing them personalized experiences through our client engagements. A recent Forbes survey reports that 80% of consumers are likely to purchase from brands that provide personalized experiences, and we meet that need through our customer centric work with our clients. Through gathering and analyzing first party cookies gathered in our engagements, we’re able to help our clients deliver personalized and impactful customer experiences and drive their business growth.

Not having third party cookies doesn’t hinder that effort, instead helping industries focus on feedback collected directly from users in order to fuel growth and changes for businesses. That relationship between customer and business will only be strengthened during this transition to other sources of visitor, user, and customer data.

To learn more about our solutions and how we can help your business grow through customer centric insights, click below!