The Scoop on Cookies and Privacy

Updated August 20, 2021 and April 2, 2024

There’s been a lot of talk lately about privacy on the internet, cookies going away, and the impact this will have on digital marketing. How are these things related, and are they even true? It’s easy to get confused about what all this means, so we are here to help sort through it.  

What are cookies?

Let’s start with what a cookie actually is. A cookie is a bit of information about a user that is stored on a website. This could be as simple as login preferences to more complicated data about user behaviors. There are two main types of cookies: first-party and third-party.

What’s the difference between first-party and third-party cookies

First-party cookies are when the website you are on is tracking information, such as logins, language preferences, and other actions that help provide a better user experience overall. These cookies include the ones that are used by the TopSpot Team and include Google Analytics, LOOP Analytics (TopSpot’s proprietary form tracking tool), and CallRail (our phone call analytics tool).  

Third-party cookies are when a different website is tracking you while on another website. These cookies allow your general user behavior to be tracked around the internet and is the cookie type causing the most confusion. When people talk about cookies going away, it’s third-party cookies they are referring to. 

Google’s timeline for eliminating third-party cookies is progressing, giving everyone plenty of time to prepare. Chrome has restricted third-party cookies for 1% of users as of January and plans to achieve 100% of users by Q3 2024 (subject to change).

Why are they restricting third-party cookies?

Over the past few years, privacy for internet users has been a hot topic. From browsers such as Firefox and Safari both increasing user control over data collection, to the GDPR in the European Union and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the US, to Apple’s recent changes to IOS 14.5, personalized tracking across the web is changing. 

While unique personal identifiers are becoming less and less available, thanks to machine learning, such as what Google Analytics 4 can do, we still have a lot of data about the users who are visiting our websites.  

Alternatives to cookie-driven data

Targeted advertising is not going away and user information will still be collected. Instead of each person having a unique identifier with their user behavior attached, specific groups of users are gathered together with their user behaviors attached. Machine learning allows the pattern of behavior to be tracked by group, instead of individually, and machine learning can also fill in gaps that might be missing in the data.

TopSpot has LOOP Analytics on our side, which allows us to dive deeper into the type of information needed to judge positive user actions on our website. LOOP uses the still-allowed first-party cookies generated and stored directly by the client domain. This means that Google’s changes involving third-party cookies will not disrupt its functionality and LOOP will comply with current privacy standards. 

What this means for you

Generally, very little of this will affect how websites are marketed and digital advertising works. User behavior will continue to define and guide our digital marketing efforts. For the most part, all that is necessary is to be aware of the changes that are coming and stay up to date. For now, only those strategies that rely on third-party cookies will feel an impact.

If you have any questions, contact the TopSpot Tech Team for more information.