Cookies are blocks of data on websites that store browsing history and user information.

Cookies are a useful tool for both user convenience and marketing, but there is a growing movement to regulate cookies from the perspective of personal information and privacy.

“Cookie-less” is in full swing as of 2024. Preparing for a post-cookie future is an important issue for  Web marketers and their clients.

This article provides an easy-to-understand explanation of the impact of the cookie-less movement and how to prepare for it.

We hope you will find it useful as you move forward with your future marketing efforts.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Types of Cookies

There are three main types of cookies, listed below.

①First-party cookies
Cookies issued by the domain of the site visited by the user

②Second-party cookies
Cookie data of the site visited is acquired by a partner site, etc. (cookies are issued by the partner site)

③Third-party cookies
Cookies issued by the domain of a third party that places advertisements on the visited site

Cookies are indispensable in marketing strategies, such as understanding customers and stimulating purchasing, as they can acquire a variety of information such as users’ action history, age, and interests.

How are cookies utilized?

The information stored by cookies is useful in many ways, including for user convenience and to improve the efficiency of marketing operations.

The following are examples of how cookies can enhance user convenience

• Eliminating the need to constantly re-enter IDs and passwords when revisiting a site once logged in
• Automatic entry of name and address when filling out forms
• When a user leaves an e-commerce site with a product in the cart, the product remains in the cart.

All of these are very convenient mechanisms that reduce the user’s time and frustration.

Cookies can also store the following data:

• Number of times the site is accessed
• Transitions between pages on the site
• User interests

Once this information is known, it is possible to determine what products users need and what they are interested in. This can be of great benefit to marketing operations, such as delivering the most appropriate advertisements to specific users, and developing analyses and strategies.

What does Cookie-less mean?

Cookie-less refers to the movement to regulate information obtained by cookies.
The regulated cookies are third-party cookies issued by third parties, mainly used in marketing.

Between 2023 and 2024, the regulation of third-party cookies continues to gradually expand in scope, and many third-party cookies will be completely eliminated by late 2024.

Google Chrome has begun testing the phase-out for some users on January 4, 2024, and larger companies are in the process of implementing cookie restrictions in earnest.

Why are third-party cookies restricted?

The main reason why third-party cookies are regulated arises from a privacy protection perspective.

Third-party cookies are cookies issued by third parties that are unrelated to the website the user has visited. Therefore, information about the user’s activity history and interests may be collected and provided to the third party without the user being aware of their existence. This is seen as a problematic violation of user privacy.

In the EU, the U.S., and Japan, laws restrict the collection of information by cookies and require the user’s consent for the acquisition and use of personal information. In response, major platforms such as Apple and Google have also voluntarily implemented restrictions on third-party cookies in their own browsers and operating systems.

After nearly 30 years of use, third-party cookies are coming to an end for the sake of user safety and the protection of personal information.
Companies and others that have been marketing with third-party cookies must now take cookie-less measures.

The Impact of Cookie less -Web Marketing & Advertising

As the cookie-less trend accelerates, how will the web marketing and advertising industry be affected?
Here are some of the main impacts.

Marketing that utilizes behavioral history will no longer be possible.

By going cookie-less, it will no longer be possible to track data related to users, such as action history on websites. This means that it will be difficult to effectively distribute advertisements, such as those that match the user’s needs, based on past behavioral history.

Since the analysis of behavioral history is extremely important for capturing new customers, it is expected that many companies will be greatly affected by the cookie-less system.

Accuracy in measuring the effectiveness of advertisements will decrease.

Cookies are used to measure the effectiveness of web advertising, such as the number of users who clicked on an advertisement, how they moved on after clicking, and the number of conversions.

However, the accuracy of these measurements will be greatly reduced as we go cookie-less.

One reason for this is the shortening of the cookie data storage period. With cookie-less, cookie storage information will be deleted immediately, which should make accurate effectiveness measurement difficult.

The impact of cookie-less is significant for companies that are achieving results by measuring the effectiveness of their advertising.

Four Cookie-less Measures

With cookie-less websites rapidly becoming the norm, cookie-less countermeasures are very important for the future marketing outlook.

Here we introduce four of the latest cookie-less measures.

(1) Context targeting

Context targeting is an AI-based marketing technique that automatically delivers your company’s content to highly relevant web pages through AI content analysis. Since it does not require user behavior history, it can be fully utilized even if it is cookie-less. By delivering your content to highly relevant sites, there is a great possibility that those users will be interested in your company’s content.

(2) Content Marketing

Content marketing, which provides content from owned media to attract customers, is an effective means of attracting customers even in the cookie-less era.

An important part of attracting visitors to owned media is the inflow of visitors from search engines. Understanding SEO and diligently updating your site are essential to increasing your search rankings for specific keywords.

While it may be difficult to achieve immediate results, content marketing is recommended as a medium- to long-term method of attracting customers that does not rely on cookies.

(3) Alternative Technologies to Cookies

Google, Apple, and other major platforms are working hard to develop alternative technologies to cookies.

For example, Google’s “Privacy Sandbox” converts user information into de-identified signals, enabling effectiveness measurement with privacy protection in mind.

In addition, Google is developing “Topics,” a system that handles user-selected genres and thus can deliver appropriate content while taking personal information and anonymity into consideration.

Utilizing these alternative technologies may enable targeting that replaces third-party cookies.

(4) Utilization of First-Party Cookies

With the ongoing regulation of third-party cookies, the use of first-party cookies will become more important in digital marketing.

First-party cookies are “first-party” because they are cookies issued by the company itself and thus can easily obtain user consent. In addition, the data obtained from first-party cookies is very useful for analysis and measurement, since it can be said to be data on users who are interested in the company’s services.

In order to collect valuable information, it is important to avoid customer churn.

Be aware of the need to enhance communication, read customer interests, and continue to provide attractive services.

Preparing for the Cookie-less Era

This article has discussed the basics of cookies, the impact of cookie-less and countermeasures.

Cookie-less will make it harder for traditional marketing methods to produce results.

It is important to keep in mind the cookie-less measures mentioned above, as well as to deal with users and customers more carefully than ever before to gain their trust.

To ensure future marketing success, let’s work on preparing for cookie-less.