Humanizing the Internet Cookie? Key Learnings from an Online Panel

Abstract:

The Online advertising is booming. Companies are increasingly relying on Internet cookies to target online ads to consumers and track ad exposure and website click-through rates. Cookies are also used for survey targeting of specific Internet user groups, for measuring ad effectiveness, and for political polling. Companies use the cookies they have dropped as proxies for the consumers they are ultimately trying to reach. However, this approach of humanizing cookies suffers from several measurement errors, due to cookie deletion, blocking cookies, multiple people in the household using the same browser, or one person using multiple browsers. Using unique and proprietary Nielsen online panel data we are able to provide valuable insight into the true correspondence between cookies and actual Internet users. We also examine the extent of the measurement errors across different demographics. We find that, for a prominent third-party cookie, less than 30% of the users have one-to-one cookie-to-user correspondence. More than 50% of the users share cookies with at least one other user, and more than 20% of the users have multiple cookies, presenting a significant hurdle for cookie-based targeting.

Recommended Citation:

Toupet, A., Zhang, M., Rao, K., Varma, S., & Perez, A. (2012). Humanizing the Internet Cookie? Key Learnings from an Online Panel. Paper presented at the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research, Chicago, IL.

Attached Documents:

  • MAPOR 2012 Program (see page #19 for the mention)
  • For a copy of this paper/presentation, please send me a comment with your email address in the box below.
2012
11/17
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    • Mathias Hädener
    • November 14th, 2015

    Hello.

    I’m writing my Bachelorthesis about the efficency of targeting methods at the University of Berne (Switzerland).
    For this untertaking it would be great to have access to your paper “Humanizing the Internet Cookie? Key Learnings from an Online Panel”.

    It is possible to send me the paper by e-mail?

    Thanks and kind regards,

    M. Hädener

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