The tiring ordeal of refusing cookies in 2023

You're on the internet, looking for the best headphones to buy. You decide to do a bit of research first, so you pull up a listicle on the pros and cons of the latest models. Suddenly, the gadget website asks you a question.

Website:Hey there, what kind of cookies can we give you?

You:What kind of cookies do you have? Oh, advertising, analytics...I don't like the sound of any of those. I'll take just the necessary kind, thanks

Website:Sounds good.

Ten minutes later, you click on an interesting news story. You're confronted with another big pop-up with lots of sliders and buttons.

Website:What kind of cookies can we give you?

You:The absolutely necessary kind only, please.

Website:What about tracking and marketing cookies?

You:Nope.

Website:Got it.

30 minutes later, you visit a website to do a crossword puzzle.

Website:Hey, what kind of cookies do you want?

You::|

Yes, we've all been there. Browsing the internet in 2023 can be a bit like talking to someone with memory loss. You keep telling them what you want and they keep forgetting. It's the same rigmarole over and over—and who even deliberately signs up for marketing cookies anyway? Something is broken.

So how did we end up here? Shouldn't user experience be getting more seamless and streamlined? Today, DALL-E 2 and GPT-4 are leveraging AI to generate human-like art and writing while the internet seems to be going backwards. The web's current solution for navigating the cookie conundrum is inelegant and crude, like something from a bygone era.

The history of the cookie

First of all, what's a cookie? Some people mistake them for tiny programs or pieces of code but they are less glamorous than that. Cookies are little text files. They contain information about users (such as IP addresses, location data, email addresses, or usernames) and are passed on to browsers from the various websites users visit.

This helps make their experience with sites more seamless. For example, cookies enable users to pick up where they left off on a website, stay logged in, or keep the items in their shopping cart intact when they visit next. In fact, the last of these was the reason the cookie was invented in the first place.

In 1994, Lou Montoulli at Netscape Navigator created the cookie in order to streamline ecommerce experiences. Prior to this, user activity left no footprints on the internet unless through voluntary actions, such as posting something or commenting. With the cookie, it was as if the internet gained a memory. (Yes, there is some irony there.)

An important distinction: When a cookie is transmitted to your browser by the website you are visiting, it's called a first-party cookie. When it's transmitted to your browser by other domains, it's a third-party cookie.

Cookies were intended to enhance web experiences, but advertisers and early adtech companies (such as DoubleClick, later acquired by Google) pounced on their potential for tracking users fairly quickly. Third-party cookies containing user information began to be traded and leveraged for advertising and promotional purposes, allowing businesses to identify and segment their potential customers easily. In the words of Apple's Tim Cook, "These scraps of data, each one harmless enough on its own, are carefully assembled, synthesized, traded, and sold."

This enabled brands to customize marketing efforts for specific target groups with personalized marketing, rather than blindly going after a general audience and hoping that they reach the right people. The promise was better ROI over "traditional" media like TV, print, and outdoor advertising. The cost was the blurring of boundaries in customer privacy.

The push for privacy

In recent years, the European Union has emerged as a standard-setter for products and services across industries. They've taken an active role in framing stringent specifications, laws, and regulations for the European single market.

Given the importance of this market, these regulations often become global benchmarks, and brands conform to them across the world. It's also an effective strategy for brands, since many other nations follow the example of the EU when drafting their own regulations.

The EU's regulatory impact is felt in the realm of digital privacy as well, with the passing of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation, 2018) and the EU ePrivacy Directive. The ePrivacy Directive is informally known as the EU cookie law—although technically it is a directive and not yet a regulation—and requires websites to request the consent of users to place non-essential cookies on their devices.

Essential cookies help websites function optimally, enhancing session continuity or enabling a consistent user experience. Other cookies—such as advertising, analytical, and marketing cookies—are deemed inessential, and require the user's consent. Naturally, aside from a few types, including cookies intended for bot or bandwidth management, most third-party cookies fall under this category.

The writing was on the wall. Browsers such as Firefox, Brave, and Safari had already been offering customers ways to explore the web while safeguarding their privacy. But in 2021, the most popular internet browser, Google Chrome, announced that it would soon be discontinuing third-party cookies.

A new paradigm

Third-party cookies are dying a slow death—and alternate solutions that have been proposed, such as FLoC and Topics, have not exactly been welcomed with open arms. But what is certain is that the internet is moving away from its invasive advertising-first approach towards a privacy-first one. Internet users will have less reason to fear data theft, relentless tracking, and unwanted cookies ending up on their devices. This means that first-party cookies have gained prominence again and, hence, the repetitive pop-ups on every website that you visit.

In the meantime, what should your business's strategy be? If your business follows a digital-first model, this shift is likely to affect you more.

The first step is to evaluate what your first-party cookie strategy should be. Remember that you don't have to collect all types of data in one go. In fact, taking a gradual approach might be more helpful in demonstrating value to users—think content giveaways, polls, and special offers—and acquiring information in a more meaningful manner based on the principle of mutual exchange.

It's also important to ask yourself what kind of data you actually need, and what you can do without. At Zoho, we've been able to grow a host of successful business products and suites for a global user base with minimal data collection. In fact, we don't use any non-essential third-party cookies or tracking cookies, and that has been our approach since 2018, well before most tech companies started taking privacy seriously. (Check out Ulaa, Zoho's zero-monitoring browser built with data privacy in mind)

Communicate your cookie policy clearly but don't overwhelm. Ensure that you make the experience of managing cookies as frictionless as possible for users. Here are a few ways you can do that:

• Choose concise language and clean, clutter-free design.
• Minimize the amount of scrolling and clicks required.
• If they've made the effort to click "manage cookie preferences", they probably don't want all the cookies. Turn non-essential cookies off by default, so that all they have to do is confirm choices.
• Don't take them to a separate page when they're already juggling a ton of tabs.
• Don't confuse visitors with novel interfaces or menu designs for cookie .management. Stick to conventional methods unless your version is a definite improvement.

Some customers are likely to accept all cookies, but others are more picky; the more effort-intensive you make the process, the more likely they are to leave your website.

Going forward

This is a time of uncertainty for the internet. It may leave digital marketers feeling lost, and lead to friction-filled experiences for users. But, in the long run, it's a chapter that will help make the internet a safer and more joyful place for customers and businesses alike.

For the former, it will hopefully translate into a sense of freedom in exploring the web, without their every action being monitored and monetized. For marketers, it'll be a way out of the moral ambiguity of the "data industrial complex", and a transition to transparent practices.

Yes, the current model is on the way out and a new solution is yet to fill that void in a way that pleases all parties—but the architecture for the new paradigm is still in the works. Hopefully it's a good one.