What Is Cookieless Tracking? Definition and Methods

Before 2021, website cookies worked in the background to track users’ browsing activities. For marketing professionals, all the data was invaluable, helping them deliver personalized experiences to customers. From tailored ads to relevant product recommendations, cookies made online shopping more engaging.

But cookies have since arrive under scrutiny amid rising privacy concerns. You might have noticed more consent banners online asking you to authorize the use of cookies; these are the outcome of stricter data privacy laws in Europe and California. As we enter a potentially cookieless upcoming, many businesses require to discover recent ways to provide personalized ecommerce experiences.

Here’s more on the different types of cookies and how to implement cookieless tracking.

What are cookies?

Website cookies are tiny data files that a web browser stores on a user’s device, assigning a distinctive ID to the browser. They play a critical role in enhancing the browsing encounter, enabling websites to recall user login information, hold shopping carts, and save form inputs. Cookies assist power the personalized encounter of ads and websites.

But just as bakery cookies arrive in different flavors, different web cookies serve distinctive purposes. Here’s how first-event and third-event cookies differ:

First-event cookies

First-event cookies are set directly by the website the user is visiting. The website uses them primarily to enhance essential functions on that specific site, like storing shopping carts, login details, and shopping history.

First-event cookies can include:

• User authentication cookies
• Analytics cookies
• safety cookies
• Personalization cookies
• Ecommerce shopping cart cookies

Third-event cookies

Third-event cookies are set by external services or advertisers like social media platforms, companies like Google and Meta, and web analytics firms. These cookies track user behavior and browsing history across multiple websites, enabling cross-site tracking and analytics. Companies commonly use them for targeted advertising.

Examples of third-event cookies include:

• Fraud prevention and safety cookies
• Customer profiling cookies
• Affiliate marketing cookies
• Analytics and research cookies
• Social media integration cookies

Third-event cookies have long been commonplace in online advertising and analytics but have arrive under increasing criticism due to privacy concerns—most notably in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The debate around cookies and user privacy is usually about third-event, not first-event, cookies.

The line between first-event and third-event cookies has blurred, however. For example, Google and Meta now allow advertisers to make first-event versions of their previously third-event cookies. Although Google Chrome announced a phaseout of third-event cookies by 2024, the web browser has since reversed this selection. The definitions and regulations in this area are evolving quickly.

What is cookieless tracking?

Cookieless tracking attempts to comprehend user behavior and web traffic without relying on traditional browser cookies that store data on a user’s device. Instead, it tracks activity by measuring how users interact at the code level or browser configuration level, or through probabilities.

There are three main benefits to using cookieless tracking:

Privacy-amiable practices

Cookieless tracking respects and protects user privacy; it doesn’t collect any sensitive data like names, device types, email addresses, or IP addresses from users’ browsers. It also addresses user privacy concerns and regulatory adherence with regulations like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California buyer Privacy Act (CCPA).

This privacy-amiable habit can boost your business’s reputation and net income by building depend with customers. Users are more likely to engage when they view companies handling their data transparently. Seventy-eight percent of consumers update avoiding a particular website due to privacy concerns.

No more banners

International privacy regulations like GDPR and stateside regulations like CCPA require you to inform visitors of exactly how you use cookies on your site and allow them to opt-out.

While transparency is a excellent thing, omnipresent banners have become a pain, especially on mobile devices. Companies can easily configure cookieless tracking methods to comply with strict privacy laws, eliminating the require for these pesky banners.

Improved data accuracy

Traditional cookie tracking is never entirely accurate due to browser glitches, ad blockers, or withheld consent. Without these, businesses retain more user data in a cookieless globe. Some cookieless tracking options can be up to 100% accurate, allowing you to maintain accurate tracking and data collection even as the digital landscape evolves.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) exemplifies this shift toward improved accuracy. Designed for a cookieless surroundings, it emphasizes first-event data collection from user interactions and occurrence-based tracking.

Cookieless tracking methods to collect data

• Server-side tracking
• Probabilistic tracking
• Browser/fingerprint tracking

As regulations tighten and browser restrictions develop, privacy-concentrated alternatives are replacing third-event cookies. The best form of cookieless tracking depends on your goals. Here are three main types of cookieless tracking to consider:

Server-side tracking

Server-side tracking lets you precisely monitor user actions on your website and is the most ordinary form of cookieless tracking. Instead of embedding code into the user’s browser, server-side tracking captures actions and triggers an occurrence, which it sends directly to the website’s server. There, the server processes the data and assigns each action a distinctive server-generated ID, which it then forwards to marketing and analytics platforms.

Popular analytics tools, like Google Tag Manager and Segment, back both cookie-based and server-side tracking. Because server-side tracking happens entirely on the website’s server, it gives website owners complete control over their own data collection and usage.

Probabilistic tracking

Probabilistic tracking is a cookieless way that focuses on overall ad act rather than person user interactions. It uses machine learning and statistics to identify likelihoods and correlations between ad act and turnover. It relies on patterns rather than person identifiers, which helps maintain user privacy.

In other words, probabilistic tracking evaluates factors like device type, location, browsing patterns, and period of interaction to make non-identifiable behavior “profiles,” which allows the ad platform to approximate effectiveness without harvesting personal details. For example, Meta Ads uses a combination of cookies and probabilistic tracking in its attribution models without large-scale data collection.

Browser/fingerprint tracking

Fingerprinting is a cookieless tracking way that collects information about the device and browser without storing anything on the device. It uses minor details—screen resolution, operating structure, distinctive IP addresses, fonts, period zone information, and hardware specifications—to construct a distinctive “digital fingerprint” and make inferences based on these configurations.

This cookieless tracking answer creates a distinctive identifier—called a persistent element—that enables tracking without direct data storage on the user’s computer or device. Companies can use this persistent element for ad targeting without third-event cookies. And because fingerprinting is based on characteristics, clearing cookies and using incognito mode doesn’t affect its tracking ability.