Is Fingerprinting going to replace cookies?

Both advertisers and publishers involved in Affiliate Marketing in India and offshore struggle with tracking technologies every time. The most reliable method they are using currently is ‘cookies’ which they use to track the conversions as well as to understand the customer behavior. On the basis of cookies they also retarget the customers the latest known Affiliate Marketing strategy in India.

What are cookies?

Cookie is a small piece of data sent from the website and stored in a user’s web browser when he is browsing that website. Basically these are used by advertisers, publishers and affiliate marketing companies in India to track the sales or actions done in performance based marketing. Whenever, the user browses the website, cookies notify the server about the activities of the user and on this basis retargeting is done.

Limitations of Cookies

While being the trustworthy method to track sales and understand customer’s behavior so far advertisers, publishers and ad networks are struggling for some robust technology that can give them rid of some limitations like-

• Cookies cannot be used for tracking on all devices like on smart phones, tablets or email programs like Microsoft MSFT -0.24% Outlook where they fail to fetch exact data about the number of conversions.
• Cookies can be deleted by the system owner by changing the settings of the browser.
• Cookies expire on their own after a particular time limit.
• Entire path of the conversion cannot be tracked using cookies.

What is Fingerprinting?

Fingerprinting is the latest method to track the user activity and provide precise information about the customer behavior. It is found effective because it combats all the limitations possessed by cookies. The technology is based on user id and therefore it tracks conversions across all devices.

It works even if the user of the device changes his identity as well as it tracks the whole path of the conversions. Professionals admit that it becomes more convenient for them to track sales across all devices including Microsoft’s Outlook enabling them to send precise and satisfactory report of conversions to the advertisers.

When it comes to understand customer behavior across different devices it is quite accurate and instant which not only assists strongly in retargeting customers rather it helps the sender to send perfectly timed mailer to the recipient. Emails are sent by the sender anytime but the content is delivered right at the moment when recipient opens the mail.

It gives the freedom to sender to let the recipient receive perfectly timed emails based on the time, occasion, and interest learned about the recipient. If a restaurant is sending emails to its customers it can deliver the offers on menu on the basis of time user opens the mail like for breakfast, lunch or dinner OR if a florist is sending mails he can deliver email based on the users interest which he learned through fingerprinting that what flower the user likes the most.

Ad networks in India can make the most of this state of the art tracking technology as when it comes to privacy of the customer fingerprinting does not collect any personally identifiable information. However, Fingerprinting is not being used in full swing yet but there are chances that it might replace the current method of tracking.