The Marchex Blog

What Does the Elimination of Third-Party Cookies Mean for Your Business?

Over the course of this year, third-party cookies will be phased out of use on the internet. Apple’s Safari and Mozilla Firefox already block third-party cookies, and Google will cease using them by the end of 2024. Rest assured, the phasing out of third-party cookies will not affect how Marketing Edge serves its customers. More importantly, this change in the internet landscape presents an opportunity for companies to better leverage the first-party data they collect via call tracking and analytics technology and other methods to improve their marketing strategies.  

What are Third-Party Cookies? 

Before we continue, let’s first define some terms: 

Cookie: when a user visits a website, that website may place one or more small text files onto the user’s computer for the purpose of collecting and storing limited information from the user’s web browsing session(s) on that website.  

Third-party cookie: a cookie that is put on a user’s device (e.g. computer, cell, tablet, etc.) by a website from a domain outside the one the user is visiting. Third-party cookies are typically used in connection with cross-site tracking for purposes of enabling targeted online advertising curated to the user’s browsing history.  

What Does This Mean for Marketing Edge? 

The phasing out of third-party cookies will not affect how Marketing Edge’s dynamic number insertion (DNI) code snippets and call tracking functionality support your business needs. Marketing Edge does not require any third-party cookies to perform its call tracking or DNI functions. A Marketing Edge code snippet that supports the operation of DNI is not itself a cookie and does not place any persistent cookies on any user’s device. The elimination of third-party cookies will also not affect how Marketing Edge DNI code snippets replace numbers on landing pages, assign DNI numbers to web users, or capture UTM parameters in links.  

Opportunity Awaits 

Marketers can consider the elimination of third-party cookies as an opportunity to take advantage of their first-party data. Companies can analyze and apply insights from their own customers’ behaviors and intent using first-party data gathered via call analytics technology and other first-party sources. First-party data may take center stage for marketers as third-party cookies phase out, and companies should prioritize using it to optimize their marketing efforts.  

Learn More 

To learn more about how call tracking and analytics can extract valuable data from your business’ customer interactions, schedule a demo with us today.