Slashdot Mirror
Net Marketers Worried as Cookies Lose Effectiveness
Saint Aardvark writes "The Globe and Mail reports that Internet
marketers are worried about the decreasing persistence of cookies.
Almost 40% of surfers delete them on a monthly basis, says
Jupiter Research -- a fact one marketers attributes to incorrect associations with spyware and privacy
invasion. United
Virtualities' Flash-based tracking system is mentioned as a possible
substitute...though they don't mention the Firefox plugin that removes
them, or talk in any meaningful way about why people
might want cookies gone. Still, the article is a good overview of
life from the marketer's perspective."
Knowing that "John Smith" visited our site 3 times a week isn't really any more insightful that knowing that "User #5233258" visited us 3 times a week.
Then why isn't user 123.456.789.012 good enough?
Every once in awhile I like to toy with the cookies. I'll edit their content - flip some bytes, add lots of corrupt text, delete sections. Occasionally, I'll flip all the cookies to "Read Only". Its fun to see a site occasionally puke from bogus cookie data.
The only PT Boat Journal on the web: http://www.PT171.org
Should web marketers really be surprised that constantly tagging people and most of the time and giving them no benefit at all makes them nervous? What if you had your hand stamped with invisible ink every time you went into a store, and received nothing for it? How many people would want to allow that?
The thing is that these marketers want something for nothing. I enable the "ask for each cookie" option in mozilla, and generally click "allow for session" on 99% of most sites because they offer me NOTHING in return for tagging me. On sites like Amazon.com I can add things to my wish list without logging in, or on slashdot I can login without typing in passwords. Tvguide.com will show me my local listings, cool. I've gotten a benefit from the site knowing who I am, so I'm much more likely to allow them to know that.
Most sites that hand out cookies give you nothing for identifying you. Why should I give them somthing they want for nothing? I certainly don't trust the average marketer to not do skeevy things like targeted pricing (looks like I visit bmw.com a lot.. I must be rich. Raise my prices by 10%).
AccountKiller
A client/server system without persistent client state is unuseably crippled. Cookies are a simple way to get that. If users are flushing them once a month, but need not, they must be balancing the convenience of persistence with their perceived "privacy". If just the marketers are complaining, I don't care. When the engineers complain that no persistent client state is crippling our apps, then I care.
Marketers could stop complaining, and fund better UIs that decrease the false perception that cookies are bad. Their stealth makes them sinister, and their unmanageability makes people throw out the benign majority with the tiny malign minority. But only a generation of marketdroids could taint the deep-seated pleasant associations with "cookies" into fear of deadly poison. If they rechanelled their complaints into better UIs, they'd be "engineers", not marketdroids. So they're doomed. If only they were as doomed as the cookies they mourn.
--
make install -not war
If they know their customers a little better, they can improve their business, just as any salesman who recognized a regular customer would.
To the benefit of whom? I feel no incentive to assist in this process.
But if you feel better always being a stranger then I dont see any problem with that. A stranger to whom? To doubleclick.net? Yes please! And let us not forget the resale value of aggregated marketing data. I think I'd like to remain a stranger to a lot of people online.
But not everyone. I don't post as an AC for example. I think I can manage my own privacy thank you.
But ultimatly, most users would probably enjoy the massive improvments in customer expierience that could be achieved using this information.
"could" being the significant term. I have no confidence that this information would be utilised to improve my life. What they going to do? Give me targetted ads? Adverts that more closely match my interests? Only an adman thinks of that as a benefit.
And I've yet to hear mention of any other
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
I use cookies for session management and tracking usage in a site.
Spyware abuse generally occurs when a big company (doubleclick, valueclick, etc) want to track your usage between sites. The spyware fears generally arise with third party cookies.
These cookies generally come attached to images. For example the image ad on top of this slashdot page might access cookies that get used to build a profile of my slashdot usage.
Preventing spyware is a matter of blocking third party cookies.
Personally, I can't see any real reason why images (the IMG tag) should be allowed to set cookies.
When the main page sets a cookie, it is almost always to provide service to the end user. When an image sets a cookie, it is almost always so marketers can build profiles. My ideal browser would not allow third party cookies nor would it allow cookies to be set by img tags.
Like it or not, the cashier represents the store during the sale. During my experience at the store, I probably have the most "face time" with the cashier, and checking out ends up being the part of the sale that tends to stick in my mind. I want it to be pleasant and hassle free.
Asking for personal information will get you a polite but terse "no." I have no intention of justifying my response to you or anyone else. Pressing the matter restults in me getting annoyed. Pressing *again* puts you in risk of losing the sale, and yes, I'm going to tell the manager why. I recognize that the cashier doesn't set the store policy. I don't think I've ever yelled at a cashier for that very reason. However, unless the store management hears about the cheesed customers and the lost sales, the store policy won't change.
I vote with my wallet and my feet. Yelling and screaming just gets you written-off as a whackjob. Telling the manager why you're taking your business elsewhere, and then doing so, punishes the crummy vendor and rewards the competitor who doesn't have the crappy policy.