When the first HTTP Cookie was ever made it had the main objective of making shopping carts more usable therefore converting more sales by giving the users a better experience.
There have been a lot of discussions regarding the privacy issues a cookie implied, but marketers immediatly understood how strong a tool it was and did’nt want to let it go. The real reason for today’s success of the cookie technology is that some major players on the market forced the users to accept cookies in order to be able to access their services.
When a technology is too strong, you simply can’t resist and you forget even when was the time you really allowed it to happen in the first place: Javascript, Flash, CSS…
With a cookie you can track tons of information regarding a user behaviour: where he has been, how many times has he seen wich advertisment, how did he react, what did he do next: basically this is how most of behavioral targeting is done.
But how would you impose such a sneaky object into a paranoid crowd: you give it a cute name! From a marketers perspective it could be more appropriate to call it a “Quicky”…
That a cookie improves user experience there is no doubt, but the tools it gives marketers and the information we gather is unvaluable.
I always was tought that “you CAN’T bake your cake and eat it too” but apparently when it comes to cookies you actually CAN…
Slurp!
Sadok Kohen