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It would be perfectly possible to serve ads without cookies (they work just fine if you disable cookies, after all). However, none of the big advertising netwo

It would be perfectly possible to serve ads without cookies (they work just fine if you disable cookies, after all). However, none of the big advertising networks is going to let the additional value of tracking customer behavior and targeted advertising slip through their fingers. That's not the same as "needing" cookies for advertising, though, and it is indeed what the directive was meant to put a stop to (among other things).

jonknee 14y ago
I presume you have never sold an online ad? While yes, you can technically do anything you'd like, in reality online advertising requires cookies. I talked over a deal yesterday and like most online campaigns it included a frequency cap (in this case 1/24 for desktop and 2/24 for mobile). You cannot do a frequency cap without cookies. I could have instead tried to sell a static image or whatever you think would work, but that deal would not have gotten done. This was a CPM campaign, so let's forget that as a possibility. How would affiliate advertising work without cookies (hint: it doesn't). So that's out too. Let's try CPC. Perhaps you can do the leg-work for me and find someone willing to pay me per click for anonymous users that may or may not exist, but I have yet to find one. This is all ignoring the fact that without cookies you have absolutely no idea how much inventory you have and what its profile looks like. Say you get 1M page views a month, but no advertiser in the world cares about that they want to know how many unique visit[ors] you get. A forum with 1M page views could have 10k members and be nearly worthless to advertisers, but a blog with 1M page views could be 500k unique visitors that are very desirable for advertisers. Without cookies you don't know and the result is you won't sell ads. It's very simple.
- rbehrends 14y ago
  That's exactly my point? You do not technically need cookies to serve ads. You just find it highly desirable to do so. And yes, I am totally aware that ad networks have built their business models around having this information available and that the marketplace has been shaped by these business model. That still doesn't make them needed in a technical sense. If cookies had never existed, then we'd still have online advertising, just as we have advertising in other media that lack this form of feedback.

jonknee 14y ago

I presume you have never sold an online ad? While yes, you can technically do anything you'd like, in reality online advertising requires cookies. I talked over a deal yesterday and like most online campaigns it included a frequency cap (in this case 1/24 for desktop and 2/24 for mobile). You cannot do a frequency cap without cookies. I could have instead tried to sell a static image or whatever you think would work, but that deal would not have gotten done. This was a CPM campaign, so let's forget that as a possibility. How would affiliate advertising work without cookies (hint: it doesn't). So that's out too. Let's try CPC. Perhaps you can do the leg-work for me and find someone willing to pay me per click for anonymous users that may or may not exist, but I have yet to find one. This is all ignoring the fact that without cookies you have absolutely no idea how much inventory you have and what its profile looks like. Say you get 1M page views a month, but no advertiser in the world cares about that they want to know how many unique visit[ors] you get. A forum with 1M page views could have 10k members and be nearly worthless to advertisers, but a blog with 1M page views could be 500k unique visitors that are very desirable for advertisers. Without cookies you don't know and the result is you won't sell ads. It's very simple.

rbehrends 14y ago
That's exactly my point? You do not technically need cookies to serve ads. You just find it highly desirable to do so. And yes, I am totally aware that ad networks have built their business models around having this information available and that the marketplace has been shaped by these business model. That still doesn't make them needed in a technical sense. If cookies had never existed, then we'd still have online advertising, just as we have advertising in other media that lack this form of feedback.