Party Cookies

Earlier this year I ran a series of four posts about living with Google's Adsense:-

• 2022-01-21: Google, Again!
• 2022-01-28: Life in Google's World
• 2022-02-04: Ads for Zonals, Out!
• 2022-02-11: Show Ads Everywhere, Out!

It's time for another post in the series. Lately I've been receiving emails from Google informing me about 'First-party cookies support for personalization'. Here's a sample email text:-

Last year, we launched first-party cookies from Google to help you increase your revenue with features like frequency capping. Now, we're updating first-party cookies to also support personalization. • What does this mean? • First-party cookies for personalization help to show personalized ads to your users when third-party cookies aren’t available, which may increase your revenue.

By now, everyone knows what cookies are, but what are 'first-party cookies' and 'third-party cookies'? A Google AdSense help page, Ad serving settings, explains,

First-party cookies • Cookies are small text files downloaded to a user's browser that can be used to store user information and preferences. Cookies are either first-party (associated with the domain the user is visiting) or third party (associated with a domain that's different from the domain the user is visiting). Google may use first-party cookies when third-party cookies are not available.

Allow first-party cookies • Choose whether or not you want to allow first-party cookies from Google on your site. Allowing first-party cookies from Google may increase your revenue because it enables features like frequency capping on ads and allows ads with a frequency cap to serve on your site.

Use first-party cookies for personalization • Choose whether or not you want to allow first-party cookies for personalization on your site. First party cookies for personalization help to show personalized ads to your users when third-party cookies aren’t available, which may increase your revenue. You can only use these cookies for personalization if you’ve turned on the Allow first-party cookies option.

The concept of 'frequency capping' sounds like a good thing. Otherwise you might get the same ad every time you look at a post on this blog (or on any of my other resources that use AdSense).

The concept of 'personalized ads', however, sounds like an attempt to get around a lack of third-party cookies. If they aren't available, there's probably a reason. Maybe someone has simply turned them off.

Long story short -- I left 'first-party cookies' on, but turned 'first-party cookies for personalization' off. Finally, what about 'second-party cookies'. Are they a thing? This page, Breaking down First, Second, and Third Party Cookies (mmaglobal.com; 'MMA is the only marketing trade association that brings together the full ecosystem of marketers, martech and media companies working collaboratively'), says,

Second-party cookies are cookies that are transferred from one company to another company via some sort of data partnership. For instance, an airline could sell its first-party cookies (along with other first-party data such as names, email addresses, etc.) to a trusted hotel chain to use for ad targeting. In theory, this enables brands to exchange data with each other in instances that mutually benefits both parties.

So in theory I could exchange first-party cookies with other chess resources and we could all make big bucks (snort!). The main problem is that Google AdSense manages the cookies, not me. I have no idea how to access them. All in all, it's better that way.