Ever found yourself wondering why ads for that smartwatch you peeked at on Amazon are following you all over the internet? That is due to the use of third-party cookies. In today’s episode, we are going to dive into third-party cookies & their imminent departure in 2024.
From why the era of third-party cookies is ending to how their removal can affect advance marketing tactics, we'll discuss what this means for your business strategy and online habits.
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We have a lot of clients asking us about the third-party cookie phase-out that's coming. That's kind of a mouthful to say. You may or may not have heard of it yet. Not having third-party cookies can be a big deal for some and less so for others. So let's dive right in into what third-party cookies are, what is being affected and what our next steps are.
Carrie Saunders:
Welcome to the eComcommerce made easy podcast. I'm your host, k Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine month old. My main goal to help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that in web development, I have seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech and the easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place. So sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. Welcome back to another episode of the E-Commerce Made Easy podcast. I'm your host, k Saunders.
Carrie Saunders:
Today, we're diving into third-party cookies. You may be wondering what exactly is a third-party cookie? They are basically tracking cookies that are placed on your computer after being generated by another website rather than the one that you're currently on. So, for example, let's say you're searching for a new smartwatch on Amazon and then you go to another site later in the day, or maybe the next day or so, and you get an advertisement for one of the smartwatches you looked at on this new website and it's a website you didn't search for smartwatches on that utilizes the data from a third-party cookie to retarget your interest in that product. So third-party cookies have made it so much easier to target ads back to you on other websites.
Carrie Saunders:
I'm sure you've experienced this numerous times I know that I have and sometimes near Christmas time I have to be particularly careful and take special measures to either block or delete these third-party cookies so that I don't give away the things I was buying for family members or for others for gifts for Christmas. Have you ever done that? I know there's been times in the past before I was browsing a new website and there was an advertisement. I was like, oh no, that's exactly what my kid was looking for. They'll know that I bought it if they see this advertisement. So once that happened to me about once, I was very careful to block or delete these third-party cookies so I didn't give away things like that to my family members that might be seeing what I'm browsing on our website. I didn't want them to know what Christmas gifts I got them right. You want that to be a surprise.
Carrie Saunders:
So later this year, google Chrome will be doing away with third-party cookies, and they're actually slowly rolling this out already now, in 2024. And this is March or April 2024. I almost lost track when it was so. They're already starting to roll this out in 2024, and it's going to completely go away by the end of 2024. And, as a typical business owner, this actually won't affect you too much. I actually don't see very many business owners use third-party cookies very much. It's most likely going to affect those that use advanced marketing techniques to retarget to their customers.
Carrie Saunders:
So why is Google Chrome and other web browsers getting away from these third-party cookies? It seems pretty harmless to track your shopping habits at first, right? Well, in the worst-case scenario, though, third-party cookies are used to track users across the Internet and across the web, building up, time after time and as time goes by, detailed profile of users that can not only include their shopping interests, which could seem pretty innocuous and okay to have, but, for example, they can also include personal information such as gender, sexuality, religion, political affiliation, etc. Much of this information is information that we don't really want to be spread across the worldwide web and be available to any website that we browse upon. We may not want people to know these things, right? I know that I don't feel like that's absolutely necessary for other websites to know that I'm a female and my approximately my age and where I'm located and things like that. It's kind of a privacy issue, right? So the move forward to tracking down on third party cookies in the long run is better for us for all of us, really.
Carrie Saunders:
A lot of business owners are wondering, though is this going to affect Google Analytics? And the good news is it does not. Google Analytics is considered a first party cookie, and it helps you track how the users interact with your site, and it doesn't give you information on how they've interacted on other websites in general, as long as you haven't done their old advanced stuff, that's the first. Google Analytics is generally a first party cookie, the way I see people use it, so the key here is that a first-party cookie is just data related to the one site you're on, and it's not passing this data off into other websites. So first-party cookies are also handy because they can keep your shopping cart stored in your browser.
Carrie Saunders:
I'm sure you've started a shopping cart and order and gone to another website. You got distracted or a kid was screaming or somebody rang the doorbell and you left your computer, forgot about it for hours and came back and your shopping cart was still there. That's the use of a third-party cookie or, sorry, a first-party cookie. So that is a first-party cookie keeping the information about your activity on that website, which can be very handy, obviously, because they didn't lose the things in your shopping cart. They can also store things like login information and other key components that make your user experience better when shopping online on that website. So, in short, the doing away of 30-party cookies is a great start to better online privacy and will minimally affect most business owners. So you can rest easier knowing that your online marketing efforts will likely not need to be changed outside of normal regulations to get consent for cookies, depending upon the country, your website services, your website services.
Carrie Saunders:
So I do have to do a little note here that I am not an attorney and therefore anything that you've heard on this podcast episode or any of our episodes really is not given as legal advice when it comes to privacy laws or anything else like that.
Carrie Saunders:
What we're trying to do is to break down the tech for you around the speak of third party cookies, particularly for this episode, so you can use your best judgment and get an attorney's advice if you feel like you need to. If you feel like you're in the situation of third-party cookies or you want to make sure you're using first-party cookies correctly, I would advise you to get the help of a lawyer who knows your country's standards and regulations. All right, so that's it for this week's episode of the e-commerce made easy podcast. If you're watching on our YouTube channel or listening on your favorite podcast app, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any future upcoming episodes. And, as always, we appreciate your feedback and your ideas. A lot of our podcast episodes are questions we get directly from you, so make sure to drop us an email at podcast at bcsengineeringcom, or find us on social media and drop us a message. We would love to hear from you and we will see you next week.