Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard the news: cookies are disappearing. At least, that's how I heard it initially. As a marketer who relies on cookies to tell me which channels are working and which aren't, this scared me. I was relieved to learn that only third-party cookies are disappearing. Third-party cookies are those set by a website other than the one you are currently on. An example of a third-party cookie would be the cookie set by Google Ads to monitor the websites you have visited and to show you relevant advertisements. The good news: first-party cookies are here to stay.
These are the cookies set by the website you are directly visiting and stored under that website's domain (eg SomeSite.com). Some examples of how a first party cookie can be used by a website might be remembering your login status from page to page or storing the employee data channel and source that first brought you to the site. place. If you're wondering why this change is happening, you're not alone. Google (Chrome), Apple (Safari), Microsoft (Bing) and Mozilla (Firefox), which together control more than 90% of the browser market share, said the initiative was aimed at protecting user privacy.
With GDPR, CCPA, and the move away from third-party cookies, it's clear that businesses and government entities are taking the privacy of personal data seriously (and businesses seeking to define how privacy is protected do so before governments define it for them). That sounds good from an individual user's perspective, but for a marketer who relies on this data to reach their audience and make more informed decisions, How will this affect my marketing? So let's start with some good news.