Digital Marketing: Cookies
Surely, you’ve encountered many sites by now that contain pop-up messages about them using cookies similar to the image below.
What is this and why is this an occurrence?
Thanks to the Data Privacy Act, authorities have ordered businesses and the online community to adhere to the Data Privacy Act in order to protect online users’ identity from potential hazards (like sensitive data theft, identity theft, scams, and the like).
Sensitive data usually consist of full name, email address, physical address, mobile number, and even payment details like credit card info. Since some websites require these from users like ecommerce sites in order to push through with an order transaction, these website owners are responsible to protect these sensitive data from theft and misuse. Websites often have Privacy Policy pages where it is fully explained why data is collected, how it is stored and used, and who to contact (a.k.a. data officer) for concerns regarding your collected data.
As for the cookies (in depth info about cookies here), these are usually used by data tracking platforms like Google Analytics in order to learn about the website visitors. But these know nothing about sensitive data as cookies only track general locations via IP address of the visitor, gender, age group, and general interests in order for website owners to somehow learn what kind of audience they have. This way, website owners may also serve the correct content that may appeal to their site’s patrons. But the cookie message was still advised by authorities in order to raise online users’ awareness. Of course, users have the right to consent or not by pushing through with exploring the website or leaving immediately.
Tip: As per Google, installing Google Analytics browser opt-out extension to your Chrome browser will disable measurement by Google Analytics. In doing so, you might get untailored ads and recommendations in the future though (e.g. you’re interested in gaming only but you might get served with random car, beauty, health, etc. ads since you’re not recognized for your interests). This is the difference between traditional and digital marketing as digital can customize ad content serving compared to traditional media which may be random or general most of the time.
P.S. As for this site, http://digitalmarketingcourseph.com or https://digitalmarketingph.tumblr.com, I used an alert instead of a pop up. Don’t worry, I only use Google Analytics for tracking lol