Media Strategies Editor Jim Meskauskas profiles the industry's growing panic about consumer cookie perception and the actions they take as a result.
Everywhere you turn, there's another article, conference session, or discussion list about cookies.
With the threat of wide-spread cookie deletion by consumers -- who fear breaches in their computer's security and the invasions of privacy that they believe cookies enable -- the online advertising industry has been scurrying to figure out how to address these concerns without giving up the benefits that the use of cookies provides most companies doing business online.
Publishers use cookies to identify their audiences. Research companies use them to conduct studies and surveys. Online retailers use them to track consumer preferences, and ad servers use them to tabulate impressions served and actions taken. The uses for cookies are legion.
The online advertising industry has spent a good deal of time these last few months talking to itself about the cookie conundrum.
In the small echo chamber where the online ad industry finds itself, the sound of both well-manicured and paper-dry palms brought together in an orgy of hand-wringing has become almost unbearable, drowning out all but the most persistent of voices.
One of these voices has been the fear-mongering, chicken-little consumer representative press -- not to be confused with the voice of the consumer, a largely absent interlocutor in the cookie debate.
The other voice has been the consumer-education advocates.
Fortunately for all of us, the interactive advertising business is replete with intelligent, innovative, and daring people who enthusiastically embrace difficult challenges and revel in finding solutions to seemingly intractable problems.
It is my sincerest hope that some of you out there are reading this now, and can find among the mish-mash of modest proposals the seeds for a solution we can all live with -- both those of us working in this business and the consumer, without whom none of us could be here.
Below I propose six possible means by which to address this important issue. Maybe somewhere in one of them, or by synthesis of several of them, we can figure this out.
Proposal #1: Consumer education
Educating the consumer about cookies has often been proposed as the best way to deal with concerns about cookies. By ensuring that customers understand more about how cookies really work, why they are used, and how the consumer benefits from their use, many believe that the problem will fix itself. The reasoning is that if a person understands what a cookie is and what it is doing on their desktop, she or he will be less apt to block or delete it. At the very least, the person will be able to make an informed decision about what to do about a cookie when confronted by it.
The problem with this is that consumer education programs require resources to deploy that companies aren't always willing to part with. The time and money needed are hard to come by, and volunteerism, though necessary and noble, is rarely sufficient.
Furthermore, consumers don't typically like to be educated. Anti-smoking ad campaigns have been run for decades, and though it could be argued that they have an effect, it's been a slow, slow boil that has taken many years. We don't have years to commit to this kind of effort with cookies. Also, when it comes to technology, consumers are typically impatient with learning more about how it works when all they really want is for it simply to work. Most people don't care how an internal combustion engine works, they just want to know that their car does what it is supposed to do and that it is safe.
Proposal #2: Industry education
This is an interesting idea I'd not thought of until recently, when I met with Bill Day, CEO of WhenU. He suggested that both adware companies and those companies that rely on cookies get out there and educate those who make software that scrub for spyware, adware and cookies.
Being informed about which cookies are "bad" cookies and which are "good" cookies, and showing them how to identify which is which, the makers of anti-spyware and cookie-blocking/cookie-cleaning software can program their products to discern among the "good," the "bad" and the "ugly." When a user runs these programs, those cookies identified as being respectable in origin won't be tagged for quarantine and deletion.
Organizations like Safecount and the Network Advertising Initiative are working to educate consumers, software makers, and even the government.
Proposal #3: Hide the cookie
Some proposals for addressing the cookie issue are based simply on ignoring the consumer's concerns about them.
One possible solution is simply to make the cookie hard to find or impossible to delete entirely.
United Virtualities has introduced PIE, or Persistent Identification Element, which is a program that stores advertisers' cookies in Macromedia Flash's local cache for backup retrieval. This way, if a user deletes cookies from the browser, those cookies will replace themselves from the Flash files.
PIE has been met by some with outrage at the thought that marketers would use technology to bypass the intentional will of users to avoid cookies. Others see it as important to protect users' cookies from being hijacked by unethical marketers using spyware.
Proposal #4: Keep quiet
The biggest reason why consumers feel the way they do about cookies is because we all keep talking about them. Anything that gets so much attention must be worthy of so much attention. The consumer comes across this entire hubbub and figures there must be something to worry about. Perhaps if we just keep quiet and stop talking about cookies all the time, consumers will lose interest. Out of sight (or is that out of "site"?) can equal out of mind.
Proposal #5: Fuggetaboutit!
We could just do away with cookies all together, relying instead on a combination of simple non-cookie-based tracking technology and third-party survey research to plot audience demographics and track activity. Site-side cookie-like technology can identify users by their IP addresses and require registration that can be matched to that IP address from the site. Yes, the web would devolve into a medium that will lose its most potent killer app as an advertising vehicle, namely, its trackability. But, hey, at least no one will be complaining about having cookies anymore.
Instead, consumers will start complaining about how their surfing experience has become so terrible. They will then be begging for cookies to come back.
Problem solved.
Proposal #6: Surrender control to the consumer
What the consumer wants (or thinks he or she wants) is control. Why not just give it to them?
How about a consumer-controlled "universal cookie" in the vein of Passport? Does anyone remember its predecessor, Firefly?
The consumer has a "passport" that contains all kinds of information about him or her as a user. It can track activity, keep record of "favorites," contain demographic information provided by the user -- anything. The granularity of the information can be determined by the consumer, and the release of information at each site visited is at the user's discretion. The consumer can grant "always open" status, for instance, to those sites they trust and regularly visit.
I think we'd all be surprised at how much information the consumer would be willing to share with us if we just put them in charge of that information.
Sure, there will be inaccuracies and imprecision, but the accountability of the web would still far exceed that of any other medium.
The biggest problem in implementing something like this is that such a passport will require standardization, and no one is much interested in relinquishing the possible ownership of a platform, major software companies and publishers wanting their particular format to be in use.
No one knows where all this is going to end up, but I have to believe that with all the brain power this industry has at its disposal, something can be worked out. Maybe it will be one of the above, maybe a combination thereof, or it could be something else altogether.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, "There are more things online, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy."
Jim Meskauskas is the media strategies editor for iMedia Connection.