Third-party cookie rejection rate increases four-fold
The average third-party cookie rejection rate increased more than four-fold in the past 16 months, from 2.84% of web site visitors in January 2004 to 12.4% in April 2005, a significant increase that could severely impact the accuracy of web marketing results,
according to research from WebTrends Inc., a web analytics firm.
Third-party cookies typically are used by hosted web analytics services to monitor customer behavior and measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and web site enhancements. WebTrends based its research on an analysis of five billion visitor sessions between January 2004 and April.
WebTrends found that on average, 12% of Internet-user traffic blocked or rejected third-party cookies, according to WebTrends. Retailers experienced a cookie rejection rate of 16.9%, the highest of 11 other online industries.
There are several factors that impacted the growth rate of third-party cookie rejection, including the release of browsers that make it easier for people to block third party cookies, says Jeff Seacrist, director of product marketing. Increased use of anti-spyware applications that both identify and block third-party cookie also contributed to the growth of third-party cookie rejection, he says.
“That trend has stabilized over the past few months but the trend is significant, and requires analytics vendors to respond in order to ensure accuracy for our customers,” Seacrist says.
For now, cookie blocking is primarily a third-party cookie issue, while first-party cookie blocking is uncommon, he says. That means web analytics services need to adopt first party cookies to monitor web traffic.
WebTrends today announced a new version of WebTrends 7 which uses first-party cookies, rather than third-party cookies, to analyzw web site performance. WebTrends 7.5 is available through the company’s On Demand service and software.
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