A cookie is data that a Web site stores on your computer to record something abo
ID: 420903 • Letter: A
Question
A cookie is data that a Web site stores on your computer to record something about its interaction with you. The cookie might contain data such as the date you last visited, whether you are currently signed in, or something else about your interaction with that site. Cookies can also contain a key value to one or more tables in a database that the server company maintains about your past interactions. In that case, when you access a site, the server uses the value of the cookie to look up your history. Such data could include your past purchases, portions of incomplete transactions, or the data and appearance you want for your web page. Most of the time cookies ease your interaction with Web sites.
Cookie dagta includes gthe URL of the Web site of the cookie's owner. Thus, for example, when you go to Amazon, it asks your browser to place a cookie on your computer that includes its name, www.amazon.com (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. Your browser will do so unless you have turned cookies off.
A third party cookie is a cookie created by a site other than the one you visited. Such cookies are generated in several ways, but the most common occurs when a Web page includes content from multiple sources. For example, Amazon designs its pages so that one or more sections contain ads provided by the ad-servicing company, DoubleClick. When the browser constructs your Amazon page, it contacts DoubleClick to obtain the content for such sections (in this case, ads). When it responds with the content, DoubleClick instructs your browser to store a DoubleClick cookie. That cookie is a third-party cookie. In general, third-party cookies do not contain the name or any value that identifies a particular user. Instead, they include the IP address to which the content was delivered.
On its own servers, when it creates the cookie, DoubleClick records that data in a log, and if you click on the ad, it will add that fact of that click to the log. This logging is repeated every time DoubleClick shows an ad. Cookies have an expiration date, but that date is set by the cookie creator., and they can last many years. So, over time, DoubleClick, and any other third-party cookie owner will have a history of what they've shown, what ads have been clicked, and the intervals between interactions.
But the opportunity is even greater. DoubleClick has agreements not only with Amazon, but also with many others, such as Facebook. If Facebook includes any DoubleClick content on its site, DoubleClick will place another cookie on your computer. This cookie is different from the one that it placed via Amazon, but both cookies have your IP address and other data sufficient to associate the second cookie as originating from the same source as the first. So, DoubleClick now has a record of your ad response data on two sites. Over time, the cookie log will contain data to show not only how you respond to ads, but also your pattern of visiting various Web sites on all those sites in which it places ads.
You might be surprised to learn how many third-party cookies you have. The browser Firefox has an optional feature called Lightbeam that tracks and graphs all the cookies on your computer. This feature can easily show how quickly a computer user can collect third-party cookies from numerous sources without even knowing it.
Who are these companies that specialize in gathering browser behavior data? Lightbeam can also determine the name and location of companies who placed cookies on your computer. If you conduct analysis using Lightbeam, you might find familiar URLs such as Facebook, DoubleClick and other commonly recognized names. However you might be surprised to find that a large majority of these cookies are more than likely to originate from websites that you have never heard of, such as Bluekai or Rubiconproject.
Third-party cookies generate incredible volumes of log data. For example, suppose a company, such as DoubleClick, shows 100 ads to a given computer in a day. If it is showing ads to 10 million computers (this number is very much within the realm of possibility), that is a total of 1 billion log entries per day, or 360 billion in one year. Truly this is BigData!
Storage is essentially free, but how can they possibly process all that data? How do they parse the log to find entries just for your computer? How do they integrate data from different cookies on the same IP address? How do they analyze those entries to determine which ads you clicked on? How do they then characterize differences in ads to determine which characteristics matter most to you? The answer, is to use parallel processing. Using a MapReduce algorithm, they distribute the work to thousands of processors that work in parallel. They then aggregate the results of these independent processors and then, possibly, move to a second phase of analysis where they do it again. Hadoop, the open-source program that you learned about in Chapter 9 of your text book is a favorite for this process.
QUESTIONS
1/ Using your own words, explain how third-party cookies are created.
2/ Suppose you are an ad-serving company, and you maintain a log of cookie data for ads you serve to Web pages for a particular vendor (say, Amazon).
a/How can you use this dat to determine which are the best ads?
b/ How can you use this data to determine which are the best ad formats?
c/ How could you use records of past ads and ad clicks to determine which ads to send to a given IP address?
d/ How could you use this data to determine how well the technique you used in your answer to question 2.3 above was working?
e/ How could you use this data to determine that a given IP address is used by more than one person?
f/ How does having this data give you a competitive advantage vis-a-vis other ad-serving companies?
Explanation / Answer
Using your own words explain how third party cookies are created.
A third-party cookie is a cookie (data that a web site stores on your computer to record something about its interaction with you) created by a site other than the one you visited. Usually occurs when there is a side that has “DoubleClick” option whichusually occurs when the web page allows other ads to pop on their site as well. Third party cookies are made constantly and sometimes you don’t even realize how many you have because they are connected into the website where you are originally looking at.
suppose you are an ad-serving company and you maintain a log of cookie data for ads you serve to web pages for a particular vendor (say Amazon).
The number or the volume of clicks on each ad that was received by user s can determine the best among the set. Ideally the best ad will be the one with the highest number of clicks.
Same way as on question a)., the best ad format can be found through organizing the ads by format and then analyzing how many click each format received, which one had more popularity. The one with the highest popularity would be the best one.
The ads to be sent to a specific IP address would be determined by collecting all the ad data logged by the IP address and evaluating it using the MapReduce algorithm and repeating it many times to get accurate results. The results should tell what kind of ads the user clicks the most, and this allows agencies to modify the user’s ad experience.
You can use cookie data once again to confirm that the new ads you just sent will be looked at.
Companies can see what web pages and IP addresses has visited, and an irregularity of information hints to a use of multiple users. Also, if an IP address starts clicking on ads that it did not used to click on before, this information also hints to multiple users.
Having cookie data gives a company a competitive advantage, because one can send ads which will more likely be clicked on by observing previous history of the IP address. Without the cookie data, you will be giving out ads without knowing how effective they will be.