Digital Thoughts: How Fresh is Your Cookie?
by Sam Harrelson
Online direct response marketers take
tracking for granted. Sure, there are squabbles over the
oft troublesome pixel, and occasionally charge backs get in
the way of a good relationship. However, it is the cookie,
in all of its simplicity, that has become the overlooked
backbone of tracking in the industry. Today, the little
piece of data that is under attack from a series of
outside forces that have the potential to alter the way
business is done in our industry.
Cookies, much like their tasty offline
namesakes, are favored because of their simplicity and ease
of use. Cookies require a minimal amount of programming and
can perform their duty seamlessly without interrupting a
consumer’s browsing experience. Technically, a cookie is a
small text file (on average no larger than around 4kb) that
includes data such as consumer information and the referring
affiliate who drove the consumer to the respective site
where the cookie is being registered. Cookies are durable
and flexible enough to last as long as a merchant
specifies. Some can perform for years and some expire on a
daily rotation, yet the user can clean them out at any time. Often, affiliates are fonder of the longer
cookie duration, since it is that model which rewards the
affiliate who first drove the consumer to a site.
It would seem that cookies would be the ideal
and have enough inherit flexibility and durability to reign
as the online direct response’s choice for tracking well
into the future. The cookie quickly gained its pre-eminence
in the online world because of its simplicity, its relative
obscurity and its long-term reach. However, recent market
forces are converging to form the perfect storm that
threatens to make the simple cookie… well, crumble.
Like any technology, those with questionable
ethics are able to manipulate the cookie. Recently, the
issue became a matter of great debate in the affiliate
marketing world with the Linkshare Titanium Award
controversy and its cookie-stuffing allegations and
implications. Cookie stuffing is a greatly frowned upon
practice that usually defines the actions of an affiliate
who places hundreds of cookies on a consumers computer from
one affiliate link. Within all of these cookies are that
affiliate’s id’s from various programs which ultimately show
up when a user goes to a site, even if the affiliate didn’t
send the consumer there through direct marketing.
Frequently, networks are the breeding
grounds for such tactics. Both advertisers and affiliates
abhor the practice. Ultimately, it reflects poorly on the
poor cookie that it is able to be so easily manipulated.
Calls for a cookie replacement are frequently made because
of the cookie-stuffing issue alone.
On the other side of the coin, a consumer
backlash has steadily grown from the grass-roots over the
use of cookies as information-storing devices. With little
understanding of how harmless most cookies actually are,
consumers can easily be led to believe that marketers are
performing dastardly Orwellian practices by spying on them
with cookies. The consumer demand for “protection” from
cookies has opened a fertile market for anti-spyware and
anti-adware programs to come to the rescue. These programs
often target cookies from the major networks and from all
levels of the online marketing industry. This can mean a
serious loss of tracking and revenue. Along those same
lines, the cookie has been hanging around the wrong crowd
and is often included in offline news articles detailing
adware and spyware. Consumers who are familiar with the
term “cookie” in relationship to the online world frequently
know it from the anti-spyware or anti-adware programs
offering consumers a sense of security. Consequently future
browsers, such as the eagerly anticipated new IE edition,
may render the cookie an ineffective medium of tracking
communication.
Will there be a paradigm shift as tracking
technology agencies continue to develop new metrics and
systems to determine the benefits of publishers and
affiliates in online marketing campaigns? Will the external
forces like cookie manipulation or consumer fears make the
cookie distasteful in online marketing? Will future
browsers make the cookie ineffective? Or, will the cookie’s
weakness at determining valuable intangibles, such as
branding, be the ultimate short-coming of the industry’s
most overlooked ingredient?
Sam Harrelson
is the Co-Editor of the Digital Moses Confidential. Send comments and questions
to sam@digitalmoses.com
