A review of alternatives to cookie-based advertising available to mobile marketers

1. Beyond Cookies in Mobile
by:

2. Cloudburst Media
1. We leverage exclusive, direct
relationships with niche data
providers to create custom
audience segments for
marketers
2. We then activate those
audience segments
programmatically, focusing on
our network of 600+ premium
publishers
3. We refine those activations in
real-time for greater insights
and improved performance

3. Intro
While reports of the demise of cookies on
mobile may be premature, tracking a user’s
online behavior across mobile devices, networks
and apps still poses a major challenge for the
cookie.
So, what can marketers do?
Let’s start with the basics…

4. What exactly is a cookie?
• Cookies are text files dropped on a user’s web
browser by a website that the user visited
• Each cookie contains a unique identifier that
links a user to a specific website, allowing for a
more personalized experience
• Cookies allow advertisers to follow a user’s
activity through the web, make inferences
about their likes and dislikes, and then serve
them highly targeted / relevant ads

5. How cookies work

6. Do cookies exist in Mobile?
• Yes, but their reach is limited
– User behavior on mobile devices is fragmented
across the mobile web and apps
– Apps operate outside the WWW, with weak nexus
to exterior properties

7. Cookies on mobile web vs. in apps
Mobile Web
• Cookies are fully functional on
the mobile web
– Users browsing the Internet using
mobile web browsers get cookied
• Mobile browsers, just like
desktop browsers, have different
cookie settings and handle 1st
and 3rd party cookies differently
• However, cookies on mobile
browsers reset when the browser
is either closed or when the
phone is shut down/restarted
Mobile Apps
• Cookies exist within apps
• However, cookies from one app
cannot be shared with another
app, making it difficult to track
user behavior across apps

8. Cookies on mobile web vs. in apps

9. Tracking challenges in mobile
• Mobile app usage accounts for 86% of users’ time on the mobile
web
– Since each mobile app uses a different “sandbox” and the mobile
browser uses its own sandbox, advertisers have difficulty identifying a
visitor as the same person (from app to app and from app to mobile
browser)
• Typically, users have more than one mobile device (cell phone,
tablet, game console), complicating identifying a user as the same
user when he surfs the Web on different devices
• User privacy preferences, such as tracking opt-out, entered on one
app are unlikely to be respected on other apps or on the mobile
web browser, or vice versa because ad networks do not recognize
different instances of visitor interactions as belonging to the same
user

10. Alternatives to tracking
users/mobile behavior across
devices
• Device IDs
• Statistical IDs
• Digital fingerprinting
• Universal logins

11. Device IDs
• These include Apple’s UDID and IDFA, Google’s
Android ID, MAC address, etc.
• Users cannot alter or opt out of tracking with
most of these solutions.
– However, the IDFA allows for opt-outs
• However, dynamic device identifiers (i.e., IDFA)
make it hard to attribute ad performance across
channels and can not tie together different
devices when used by the same consumer

12. Statistical IDs
• Algorithms that leverage information provided
by the gateway a device uses to access the
Internet
– TapAd, DrawBridge, AdTruth
• These statistical solutions are probability-
based, and suffer from some uncertainty,
especially when employers offer employees
the same devices, with all subject to
centralized software control and updating

13. Digital fingerprinting
• Combines algorithms and data points, such as
device ID, Wi-Fi networks used to access the
Internet, time zone, language settings, sites
visited, etc. to tie together ownership of
different devices
– TapAd, Drawbridge, AdTruth

14. Universal logins
• Proposed solution, not yet available, would allow
users to specify mobile tracking preferences
through a single, centralized dashboard
– Users could register their devices and apps and
indicate privacy preferences for each
• Those willing to participate would enjoy
increased personalization and potentially free
access to ad-supported services / content that
those opting out would be required to pay for

15. Final thoughts
• Mobile is a critical marketing channel
– 60% of web traffic originates from a mobile device
• And connecting a user’s behavior in mobile apps with their
behavior on the mobile web is critical to success. Linked data:
– Reduces delivery of irrelevant ads and/or the same ads
over and over
– Identifies whether a user who saw a product advertised in
an app transacted on the mobile web (and vice versa)
• However, marketers can not rely on cookies in mobile alone
• Testing alternative frontend and backend tracking
mechanisms and leveraging in-app tracking solutions, such as
Kochava or TUNE can help

16. How Cloudburst Media can help
• We can leverage our direct relationships with
data providers to create custom audience
segments for your brands
• Our technology partnerships allow us to export
data derived from desktop behaviors and apply it
cross device, allowing us to target our custom
audiences on desktop and mobile devices
• Allowing marketers to advertise to the same
users cross device with more certainty

17. Thank You
32 West 39th Street, Fourth Floor
New York, NY 10018
+1 212 401 1975
info@cloudburstmedia.com