Many marketers are concerned about what the slow and eventual death of browser cookies means for their business. That includes us and our customers, and we’ve covered what downfall of tracking cookies means for marketers and how marketing will change without cookies.
At Invoca, we’re always working to make sure that call tracking and conversational analytics remains an effective and privacy-compliant tool for marketers that is adaptable to changes in surrounding technologies and regulations. Here’s a breakdown of the latest news on tracking cookies and what we’ve done to make sure our call tracking platform works even better without them.
Data privacy will continue to be a hot topic in 2020 as consumer demand for control over their personal data increases and new regulations go into effect. The Pew Research Center found that 75% of consumers say there should be government regulation of how businesses use consumer data, and new regulations like CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) reflect those demands. This means that businesses must do more than ever to strike a balance between privacy controls that consumers want (and laws demand) while continually improving customer experience and personalization.
The leading browsers from Google, Apple, and Mozilla are continuing to build out cookie-blocking functionality, too. The big news in tracking cookie controls comes from Google, as Chrome 80 was released on February 4. Google won’t be going to the same cookie-blocking lengths as Safari and Firefox, though. Instead, they will stop sending third-party cookies in cross-site requests unless the cookies are deemed secure by being flagged using the SameSite internet standard. If a cookie doesn’t meet this standard, then they will no longer be accessible. Check out this video to learn more about how SameSite verification works in Chrome.
With these industry changes rendering third-party cookies nearly useless, the importance of first-party data has seen exponential growth. Technology companies that relied upon third-party cookies are creating solutions that allow them to continue to provide valuable solutions to their customers. This is where Invoca’s solution of storing data “server-side” comes into play.
Put simply, “server-side” is the process of storing data on an external server instead of in the user’s web browser — usually in a browser cookie.
Recognizing the fast decline of cookies, Invoca is minimizing its reliance on them by moving storage of the first-party data we collect on your behalf to our servers instead of in your customers’ web browsers. This change isn’t simply a band-aid; it will actually enhance Invoca’s attribution capabilities.
The most immediate improvement our customers will notice from the first phase of this release is the resolution of limitations that browser-level cookie blocking has created. Server-side data storage will eliminate any issues created by cookie life duration limits, giving you longer and more flexible attribution windows that provide you with the most granular data possible. If you are currently using Invoca, note that no changes need to be made to your platform or campaigns. The move to server-side data storage will be seamless, so it will be business as usual for our customers.
Also, the size of the Invoca cookie will now be drastically smaller as we are no longer storing all of the attribution data there. This smaller cookie size means our customers should experience improved site performance.
We aren’t stopping there, though. Now that we are out from under the burden of the browser cookie, we can provide more flexibility in how to handle repeat callers with improved intelligent routing capabilities, more accurate attribution, and the potential to optimize your phone number usage through more precise mapping of repeat visitors to an Invoca phone number and the data points that we captured during their initial site visit.
The marketing world will continue to change at a rapid pace. As part of our commitment to being a trusted technology partner for our customers, Invoca will continue to stay ahead of the curve with solutions like server-side attribution.
