While the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) talks to develop a blanket Do Not Track policy is falling apart, a combination of factors are leading digital companies to invent more sophisticated tools for audience tracking.One, Mozilla and Microsoft separately announced plans to abandon cookies. Mozilla said the upcoming release of Firefox will block third-party cookies by default. Microsoft said that it, too, will block third-party cookies, and it looks like Google is adopting a similar strategy.That leaves subscription sites that use meters to develop in-house solutions, but cookie-based tracking, even when done by internal technology, is facing more obstacles in Europe.We recommended email registration for subscription sites looking track and market to their free users more efficiently. But that doesn’t solve the other growing problem with cookies — mobile apps.According to the Pew Research Center, cookies (and their Do Not Track opt-out features) do not work for mobile apps. And consumers seem to be spending more and more time in mobile apps than on mobile sites, according to data gathered from comScore, Alexa and Flurry Analytics.That may be why the Digital Advertising Alliance and the Interactive Advertising Bureau are looking to “browser fingerprinting.”Apparently, the average browser that supports Flash and Java carries 18.89 bits of identifying information. And a 2010 study by Peter Eckersley at the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that 94.2% of the browsers with that functionality were unique, or able to be fingerprinted.While browser fingerprinting allows for cross-device tracking (a growing need with multi-device use by consumers), there’s no real identifying information. Instead, consumers are identified by likelihoods that they’re the same person based on converging data points.Similarily, another company is developing technology that tracks audiences one layer up, on the wi-fi level. And another company, Drawbridge, has figured out how to determine that a cellphone, work computer, home computer and tablet belong to the same person, without cookies and even if the devices are in no way connected.However, because of the consumer backlash towards “tracking,” Drawbridge goes out of its way to avoid that word and instead says it offers “bridging” and “device pairing” services.What does this all mean for subscription sites?Well, for starters, sites that use cookies (especially metered news sites) will need to change their technology since fewer browsers are able to support cookies. But this is a good thing, since cookies are easily cleared and don’t provide multi-device syncing (and it’s highly likely consumers are accessing the same news sites over multiple devices).And two, all subscription sites engaging in behavioral targeting or audience tracking will need to start getting ready for these changes now. The tide of change waits for no man.
The Death of Cookies and the Future of Audience Tracking for Subscription Sites
While the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) talks to develop a blanket Do Not Track policy is falling apart, a combination of factors are
- Filed in News, Subscriber Acquisition, Technology
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