Cookies crumble as digeracy sets in

Rudy Nadler-Nir

The gist of the story is that a European law, regarding the use of the electronic files known as 'cookies', is coming into effect on 25 May. After that day, marketers will not be allowed to use cookies without obtaining - upfront - an explicit consent form users.

Opt-in feature

In other words, as far as the EU is concerned, in less than two months, cookies will become an opt-in feature.

'Cookies' - for non-technical persons reading this - are text files that are planted in users' PC to be subsequently read by the browser. These files help track user movements, including their behavioural, habitual and navigational patterns. Cookies are the cornerstone of many user tracking mechanisms and web-analytics applications we use today. Without cookies, there is no way to identify unique users and link them to specific websites and web pages, products, content-and-software repositories and transactive hubs. Without cookies, users are nameless dots, devoid of any identity or history.

Cookies serve to generate targeted advertising. They are used to localise users, maintain their interests and preferences, remember past purchases and choices, and use all that information to help marketers serve users with relevant content. If, for example, you visit a site dealing with the charms of Paris, you can expect to encounter adverts on and about France, Franco-tourisms, French food etc, as you keep trawling online.

Needless to say, targeted marketing is a thriving business.

Increase user privacy online

Opt-in cookies are the result of a concerted effort to increase user privacy online. Legislators seek new ways to ensure that identities are kept secret or, at least, are divulged by 'informed consent'.

So, if the new laws are to be understood literally, whenever marketers wish to 'cookify' a user, they'd need to fire a pop-up dialogue box, informing the user that the site owner/marketer wishes to use a cookie and explaining what the cookies is for, which information will be kept --and for how long.

The thought of windows popping up all over the place in the course of one's online meanderings are enough to cause marketers serious heart burns, but there is little one can do - sooner or later, other countries will join the European countries and revise legislation dealing with cookies. One can conservatively estimate that the process will be prevalent online in a year or two.

So, what now?

Marketers must prepare themselves - and their customers - for the eventuality that it will become impossible - often illegal - to obtain and use information related to user movements, actions and choices online.

On the one hand, today's handsomely profiled users will become anonymous spectres, unnamed, unidentifiable beings. On the other hand, 'friends' and 'like'ers' will continue to have an uninterrupted view of peers' real-time activities, preferences, actions and choices.

Welcome to the Digerate age, where digerate (often incorrectly termed 'digitally literate') users are the true architects of the world they face and experience.

The five laws of digeracy:

1. The term "social media" is a misnomer; use it at your peril

   Social networks are a conglomeration of relationships between consenting peers who seek, locate, identify and exchange content. It is therefore impractical - even futile - to treat networks as media channels and use them to advertise 'made-to-match' brands.

2. Brand authority is located away from its 'legal owners'

   Marketers come up with what they believe is an outstanding, convincing and powerful campaign, only to find out that the inherent value of their brand work is zilch. Case in point: "Gap scraps logo redesign after protests on Facebook and Twitter".

3. Customer insight and brand awareness are deeply hidden within peers' social interactions

   The most effective way to ascertain how customers perceive a brand is to be immersed in their interaction, get closer to their world-of-meaning.

4. It's not about what you know, it's who you know online

   'Trenders' can be identified - but one needs to approach them as the leaders of a tribe, rather than as potential sales-persons and brand-ambassadors.

5. A brand is a sum total of the positive and negative relationships it has online

   Whether it's named Whuffie, Wasta, Egoboo, Social Capital, Reputation or Attention Economy, it's really all about the elusive, cumulative intangible value (positive, negative or neutral) assigned to the brand by its users and their peers during their online social interactions.

We will take a closer look at these five laws of digeracy in the next article.