How To Survive In a Post-Cookies Advertising World

This guide provides a brief history of cookies, why Google is getting rid of third-party cookies, what this means for digital advertising, and how teams can use Terminus for their new targeted advertising strategy in a cookie-less future.

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Cookies Advertising

What is cookie based advertising? Cookies advertising dates back to 1994, when the first cookies were invented. Before cookies were created, most of the web was static. Anyone who went to a website would see the exact same site. Cookies made it possible to tailor sites to the user, without the user having to manually tell the website who they were. It’s important to define cookies in computer use and the basic cookies meaning to understand why advertising is changing so significantly.

A first-party cookie is like a cookie that Gmail might use. It is set by Gmail and identifies you to Gmail, so you can get your own emails. A second-party cookie is more like an integration. You might log into a website with a Google authentication service. But the advertising cookies definition relies upon third-party cookies; this is where the targeting cookies definition starts.

Targeting cookies or advertising cookies are placed by a third-party and read by a third-party. What are targeting cookies?They are used by advertisers to track where you go on the web. What is cookie based tracking? It’s the foundation of all those “targeted” ads that you’ve ever seen in your life.

Understanding the cookies marketing définition is important, especially when you know that it’s about to change. Most advertisers learn how to use cookies for marketing early on. An HTTP cookie or session cookies can tell advertisers exactly how many times an individual has visited a site, what products they looked at, and any other actions they may have taken. But the basic marketing cookies definition is about to change because Google is taking action to eliminate third-party cookies.

Cookies Advertising Definition

A basic cookies advertising definition only helps so much. Often, it’s easier to understand cookie based marketing through an example. Let’s take a look at functionality cookies and the methods by which they are often used by looking at an eCommerce shop.

First, the eCommerce shop may engage in cookie based targeting, cookie based tracking, and cookie based retargeting. By putting a cookie on someone’s browser, the store can see what products they’re looking at and whether they’ve been there before. Every time the user comes to the store, even if they haven’t logged in, they will see those products promoted to them first. So, the website is able to adjust based on prior behavior.

But first party cookies are only one of the types of cookies in computer advertising. Third party cookies advertising can be more insidious. The eCommerce shop can now purchase ads on Google. Google tracks people everywhere, through its advertising network, so it can know very deep information about each person; their core demographics, interests, educational levels, and they can even guess at things like income. Now cookie will use third party cookies to track people and identify users most likely to make a purchase on your site.

Importantly, no one has to visit the eCommerce site to get tracked or targeted. They aren’t even visiting Google. What makes the ad third-party is that they are being served Google ads (and Google cookies) from Google even though they’re visiting another site altogether.

Marketing cookies are what allows for extremely targeted ads. Ads based on cookies can be targeted to very narrow demographics. This improves ROI and reduces advertising costs. Part of the cookies marketing strategy is to ensure that only those who are interested in a product get advertised to. Theoretically, this can benefit both the eCommerce store and its customers. In practice, it can make individuals feel as though their privacy has been breached.

But before marketers start up with a cookies advertising slogan or working on their target market for cookies, they should be aware that cookies are likely to go away soon.

Cookie Based Advertising

Those are the theories behind cookie based advertising, but we also need to understand the technology.

When a website is loaded, it sends a file to the browser that is loading it. Chrome cookies, Firefox cookies, Internet Explorer cookies — they all operate the same way. You can look at your third party cookies Chrome in your settings. You can even delete them or start refusing them. Regardless, these tracking cookies Chrome sit on your system until you visit another site that requests them. So, they’re a lingering signal that can be used.

There are privacy settings for third party cookies Safari, third party cookies Firefox, third party cookies iPhone, and pretty much every other platform you might be interested in. While cookies do not perform cross-platform (they aren’t persistent between devices), they will stay on the individual device until they expire. Some cookies never expire and you need to manually wipe them out. If you’re concerned about excessive cookies, you can delete your cookies from time to time.

You can get a cookies ads browser to find out more about the cookies on your system. But cookies also make the web work. Without cookies, you couldn’t log into your bank account, your email account, or anything else you do on the web. For the most part, cookies are used for legitimate identification and authentication services. But the technology is aging and can be exploited, which is why second-party and third-party cookies may soon be eliminated.

Cookies and Targeted Advertising

No discussion of cookies and targeted advertising could ignore Google ads cookies. Google runs the largest advertising network. Google analytics cookies are among the most useful cookies out there, and Google third party cookies are used in the vast majority of targeted ads.

But in 2021, the Google cookie announcement was made; a pledge to discontinue Google cookies 2022. Today, you can look at your Google cookies list or Google ads cookies list and delete them if you want privacy. But they will likely come back.

What is the Google cookies meaning — why are they so important? Google runs two services, AdSense and AdWords. Through AdSense, sites can host Google ads. When people visit a site with Google ads on it, they get a cookie put on their computer. This cookie can a significant amount of user activity because AdSense is so prolific.

On the other end is AdWords. AdWords lets people actually purchase these ads. AdWords uses Google’s cookie-based information to target its advertising. Google’s AdSense banners could see you visiting ski sites, for instance, and then Google could start sending you ads for a ski shop.

It’s important to note that all of this works because of Google’s tremendous saturation over the internet, which allows them to consistently track consumers and consumer behavior. But with Google’s pledge to eliminate cookies, this could dramatically change.

Cookies Digital Advertising

If cookies digital advertising is going away, how will marketers engage in advertising without cookies? Of course, some may go through programmatic advertising without cookies, and simply advertise on websites that support their demographics. Others may need to engage in retargeting without cookies, by collecting more information from customers in the form of newsletters and social media. And still others may have to engage in tracking without cookies, with whatever new technology emerges to track and fingerprint individual users.

The world of audience targeting without cookies is sooner than it might appear.

Tracking without cookies and audience retargeting without cookies doesn’t have to be overly complex. There are methods of doing this even now, mostly through social media. When no cookie marketing comes into fruition, it’s likely social media advertising will become more valuable. Sites still have information based on what users do on the sites themselves; they just can no longer track users across a multitude of sites they don’t own.

But the death of third party cookies and cookie deprecation isn’t going to be taken lying down by marketers. It’s very likely that another technology to track individuals will arise even with third party cookies going away. AI and machine learning systems may be able to determine who a person is through other aspects of their behavior, and it’s possible that companies such as Google already have a rudimentary form of this fingerprinting to put into play.

Account-based marketing and fostering genuine relationships with customers will be one way that marketers will be able to extend their reach and their digital marketing campaigns. Many consumers were already largely ignoring targeted ads, so the disappearance of cookie-based advertising may not be as harmful as it might seem.

How Do Cookies Work for Advertising?

So, how do cookies work for advertising? It’s easiest to understand through a cookies ads example. Many customers don’t like the idea of cookie based authentication and would rather know how to delete cookies, but there are a lot of ways in which cookies actually work for people. Cookies, for instance, can remind you about a product that you were genuinely interested in, but forgot to buy.

Most people have the power to disable or enable third party cookies or even first party cookies (or at least get prompted about them), in their privacy and security settings. But cookies do make the internet work. While tracking cookies removal is simple, a complete removal of all cookies would render large swathes of the internet unusable.

A cookie tracker or cookie management tool can help, as can cookie tracking software. Cookies software has emerged to identify tracking cookies spyware and tracking cookies Symantec. Are computer cookies bad? No. But are cookies safe? Also, no, at least not always.

If you’ve been on the web recently, you’ve seen all those notices and banners going up at the bottom of the screen. This is because the GDPR has been cracking down on cookies. Websites have to disclose cookies and ask if you want them now to be able to serve those in the EU.

This is only part of the strongly negative sentiments to cookies that have arisen and the challenges that many companies are going through trying to adhere to new regulations about the technology.

Cookies Are Used in Digital Advertising for Many Purposes

So, we’ve discussed ads. In addition to the traditional paid advertising cookies example, cookies are used in digital marketing for many other things. Advertisers can look at cookie marketing ideas to develop their own ideas, cookie ads example and case studies to see how cookies can help them, and general cookies advertisement sample sites to see how cookies really work.

While you may not be able to duplicate a cookies advertising example in 2022 (at least, not a third party cookies example), you can still benefit from seeing what type of tactic worked. With a tracking cookies example, for instance, you may be able to translate it to the same demographics on social media.

Look at Quizlet. Cookies are used in digital advertising for Quizlet by collecting information about teachers and students. From there, Quizlet is able to better target its content and quizzes toward the necessary skills and topics. When cookies are used in digital advertising for MCQ sites (multiple choice quiz sites) they can also be used to pick up from where a user left off, even if a user started to interact with an ad or embedded content on another site entirely.

Cookies are used whenever persistent data must be saved on a user’s machine. Today, most of our authentication is the form of a login. But a site can simply remember you, what you did on the site last, and even potentially the other places you’ve been (in the form of third-party cookies). For example, sister sites could place cookies to track you through the sales funnel, identifying areas in which certain sites within the network need to improve, as well as areas in which those in the funnel could be lost. Who knew? Cookies are used in digital advertising for sales strategy, too.

What will come next after cookies? No one really knows. There are technologies that are being developed to replace cookies right now, and there will be new authentication services that need to be developed. As cookies disappear, security and privacy will be improved, but advertisers will need to jump aboard the next technology solution quickly if they don’t want to be left behind.