You may have heard of cookies before, it may have possible been in a browser option to “delete cookies” or in a pop-up warning you that a website stores your cookies. But what does this mean? Who is the invisible monster stealing cookies from your jar? Or is he placing them in your jar? And in any case….what does it have to do with advertising anyway?
So, here’s the rundown: cookies are small files sent from the server of a website you’re visiting to your browser (where you’re looking through now: Firefox, Safari, Chrome) that are then stored on your hard drive. These are called first-party cookies and they are typically bits of information that are used to enhance your browsing experience like time zone, shopping carts, and location. When you visit a website that originally sent a cookie to your computer, your computer will send that cookie back to the site and it will recognize you, your settings, previous purchases etc.
Third-party cookies may interest us as advertisers a little more. They are slightly different from first-party cookies in that these small text files don’t travel between your hard drive and your browser but rather between your browser and the website of the company that’s displaying ads on the page you’re visiting. Advertising serving companies use these cookies to keep track of the advertisements you’ve seen. With this information they can help control the number of times you’ve seen an advertisement or how effective a campaign can be. Websites you’ve visited can also track who came to their website and continue retargeting them with ads as they continue their browsing.
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