Third-Party Cookies Very Stale

The first quarterly update to WebTrends’ research on cookie rejection demonstrates the edge first-party cookies have over those served by third parties.

WebTrends data shows a 5.2 percent increase in user rejection of its third-party cookies since April, and the overall rejection rate reached 13.2 percent in June.

The report is part of a push from the Web analytics firm to get customers to migrate to first-party cookies. Coremetrics last week issued a similar report and recommendation.

“When we recognized this [cookie rejection] issue starting to rise two years ago, we started to see a discrepancy between our software customers using first-party cookies, and on-demand customers using third-party cookies,” said Jason Palmer, vice president of products at WebTrends.

Verticals most affected by the issue are retail and healthcare, which experienced 16 percent and 15.4 percent rejection rates respectively. Verticals experiencing the highest increases in third-party cookie rejection are technology, travel and retail.

WebTrends clients that have migrated from third to first-party cookies have reported measurable success, the firm said.

WebTrends allows users to own their first-party cookies and maintain control over SSL certificates. Palmer said SSL certificates are of particular concern to financial institutions, retail sites, and other sites that require the exchange of a high volume of personal information.