Digital has come a long way now. More and more brands are recognizing the might of internet/digital planning. Technological advancements have enabled the marketers to move from carpet bombing the TG to hyper-target the audience through digital. Online Cookies have been instrumental in feeding marketers back with user behavior & user media consumption habit.
This is how COOKIES are defined on Wikipedia: ‘A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is used for an origin website to send state information to a user’s browser and for the browser to return the state information to the origin site’. Cookies get stored on the users system when a request is sent from user’s browser to the site server. This cookie is being looked up when a user re-visits the site, and if found, same gets updated with the recent visit. Cookies can give access to data like: Authentication of identification of a user session, User’s preferences, shopping cart contents, or anything else that can be accomplished through storing text data on the user’s computer.
Ad Serving, Retargeting or Remarketing, Behavioral targeting techniques use cookies as a tool to identify user and then serve desired communication accordingly. So, cookies are very critical for internet planning per se.
“But people delete cookies”. That’s the thought which immediately comes to the mind. But before looking at the effects of cookie-deletion, let’s look at how cookie deletion can happen:
- Users can choose to delete the cookies manually.
- Users can turn off the cooking saving through their browsers.
- Security programs or Anti-viruses can delete the cookies.
How Cookie Deletion Affects Internet/Media Planning:
Scenario 1:
|
Day 1 : ‘X’ Visits ‘Yahoo.com’ |
Day 2: No Visit |
Day 3: No Visit |
Day 4: No Visit |
Day 5: No Visit |
No of Unique Visitor: 1
Total Visits: 1
Scenario 2:
|
Day 1 : ‘X’ Visits ‘Yahoo.com’ |
Day 2: No Visit |
Day 3: No Visit |
Day 4 : ‘X’ Re-visits ‘Yahoo.com’ |
Day 5: No Visit |
No of Unique Visitors: 1
Total Visits: 2
Scenario 3:
|
Day 1 : ‘X’ Visits ‘Yahoo.com’ |
Day 2: No Visit |
Day 3: No Visit |
Day 4 : Delete The Cookies |
Day 5: ‘X’ Visits ‘Yahoo.com’ again |
|
Day 6: Deletes The Cookies |
Day 7: No Activity |
Day 8: ‘X’ Visits ‘Yahoo.com’ again |
Day 9: Visits ‘Yahoo.com’ again |
No of Unique Visitors Reported: 3
Total Visits: 4
In scenario 3, same user visits ‘yahoo.com’ 5 times but is counted as 3 Unique Users in the report. In reality, it is the same user which has visited the same site four times in 9 days. This is where overestimation/underestimation of data happens. This will affect you campaign depending upon how you have configured the frequency settings. Frequency capping is the setting of a maximum number of times an internet user can be served an advertisement within an agreed time period. The capping level (e.g. 3 impressions) and capping time-period (e.g. user session, day, week, month or campaign duration) is negotiated SEPARATELY with EVERY media owner and ad network used. If you are using frequency capping of 3 site wise, your ad will be shown to a user’s at the max 3 times. But since, there is an overestimation of Unique Users; your ad is being shown to the same user, as they visit other sites in the media plan, more no. of times but not more than 3 at any point in time. In reality, your frequency is higher than you bargained for.
If you are using capping at an on overall campaign level, there should not be any problem on showing more impressions. But there are other issues here. Consider the following:
- Capping makes it harder for media owners to deliver impressions targets and therefore it is not popular with them.
- Media owners prefer to cap at higher levels (e.g. 3+ or 4+ rather than 1+) over shorter periods (e.g. user sessions rather than campaign durations).
- High prestige media owners may refuse to cap altogether.
But in either case, if cookie is deleted, the problem would persist.
This is not it. There are other factors which can change the numbers. If a same user is using two different browsers and is visiting the same site, he/she would be counted a ‘2 Unique Users’. If you are using two different logins on your system, you would be considered ‘2 Unique Users’ if you visit the same site.
Also, users tend to log on to website from various devices they own. Again, the user is same but you may still be counted as a different Unique Visitor as you use different devices.
So, when sites come and say they have “x” unique users in a month, think again. Are they telling you “Unique Visitors” or “Unique Cookies”? To arrive at the real number, “X” given by the site needs to divided by the “cookie deletion rate”. One study says cookie deletion rate is more than 4% for Asia Pacific. Then the number needs to be adjusted further to tackle multiple location & devices problem.
This is easier said than done. It requires meticulous research and thinking. One of the solutions which come to my mind is to use mechanism which could be attributed to users than to cookies. I do not know what could be this mechanism. Cookies have so far really helped the digital marketing cause. I am sure research is on somewhere to get around this issue. Hope the solution comes fast.

