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Cookies + Tracking: What It Means For Marketers

Search Laboratory

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July 23, 2020 | 3 min read

Search Laboratory is excited to announce the launch of a new podcast series, which explores some of the latest digital marketing updates and insights

Listen to the second episode to discover how to kick-start your marketing in a post-pandemic world. In the third episode “Cookies + Tracking: What It Means For Marketers”, Search Laboratory’s Ian Harris, joined by Paul Shearing, Head of Analytics and Data Science, Pete Whitmarsh, Head of Paid Media, and Jimmy McCann, Head of Digital Strategy, to discuss cookies, the tracking issues behind them and the problems they are causing for marketers. They also cover some of the solutions to these issues and predict where this is all heading in the future.

Over the last year Apple has been making changes to the way their browser works, specifically in its treatment of cookies. Originally it was only third-party cookies that were targeted, being deleted or blocked by browsers, then earlier last year it shifted focus to removing some first-party cookies if they are set in the browser using JavaScript.

Google Analytics uses a first-party cookie to set and store its unique identifier for a user, this is the client ID. Under Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) 2.1 first-party cookies set in the browser were restricted and set to expire after seven days after which the browser removes them. With the introduction of ITP 2.2 things became stricter, cookies are now being limited to only one day in some circumstances, which is problematic for marketers as it means the customer journey is not recognised and tracked in its entirety.

What can marketers do?

Apple stated the purpose for introducing such changes is largely to target and prevent ad platforms that have started to implement ways to track users that use first-party cookies, and analytics tracking solutions are an unfortunate casualty in this change.

All is not lost however, because these changes are only designed to restrict the cookies set in the browser, this leaves the option open for a website owner to take control of setting their own cookie using a server-side method, which Search Laboratory are able to help implement.

You can subscribe and tune in to the Search Laboratory Podcast today on iTunes or Spotify. For more information on what ITP is, what it means for marketers and what the solutions are, click here.

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