On 5th April 2011, IAB Belgium held a number of workshops about Online Targeting – reaching the right audience online. One of the workshops (“Cookies or the bitter taste of virtual food” by Jan Decorte) was about cookies, an essential item if you want to use online targeting in your marketing plan. The workshop looked at the pros and cons of cookies and then discussed the standpoints of the sector, the legislator and the European Union.

According to Jan Decorte’s definition, cookies are small text files with three objectives:

1. Saving a session on the user’s pc (IP-address)
2. Personalisation for the user (IP-address)
3. Collecting statistical data about the user’s surfing behaviour (IP-address)

Cookies are not a means:

1. To spread viruses
2. To send spam
3. To allow pop-ups to appear
4. To identify the user behind an IP-address

The European Union and the legislators are worried that cookies could be used to identify people. The driving force here is the law on consumer protection. However, cookies are not used to save and to spread personal details. Identification occurs only on the basis of an IP-address, so that people do not know who is surfing on the computer. If this identification can still occur or if the rule-makers assume that this is a violation against the law on consumer protection, then an ‘opt-in’ by the user must take place at the moment that he/she visits a website that uses cookies. In other words, the user must give permission for each action on the internet.

To clarify the problem, IAB Europe made the following 2 short animation films to explain what cookies are and to illustrate the problem of the opt-in rule:

1. Cookies make it easier to gather information about the web surfing history of a visitor and provide a better user experience. In this short film, you’ll see what cookies are, and why opt-out might be a smarter approach to dealing with cookies than opt-in.

2. Cookies make it easier to gather information about the web surfing history of a visitor and provide a better user experience. In this short film, you’ll see why opt-out is a smarter approach to dealing with cookies than opt-in.

Written by Timo on Monday 18 April 2011 in category Blog with the tags online marketing, IAB, Cookies and animated explanations . This message has has no comments.