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Cookie Lifespan report

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Level 4

10/28/10

It would be great if we could have a report which indicated the average age and/or age distribution of SiteCatalyst tracking cookies (current time - cookie creation time) generating visits in a Report Suite over a certain time period.

 

Why you say?

 

A lot of reporting in SiteCatalyst is derived from cookie-based data.

 

There are a lot of ways that the relatioship between cookies issued and a specific human user can be interrupted;

- multiple browsers per user

- multiple devices per user

- multiple users per browser

- blocking of cookies from a browser

- deleting cookies from a browser

 

I understand that there is no maigc bullet for the effect the above factors have on cookie <-> user, and certainly over time the effect grows in a given cookied population,  but I would like to be able to assess the rate of the effect and therefore the confidence I can place in cookie-based reports over a given time period.

 

eg If I am trying to track attribution of multiple campaigns to conversion, does the average cookie in my user population last long enough to record first and last touch over the campaign period?

2 Comments

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Level 4

10/29/10

Absolutely second this one.


This is something that we've been looking at doing from a code standpoint, using a counter evar or something like that...but as SiteCatalyst has the data already, why not expose age of cookie as a report?

 

I think as marketers we are conscious of cookie-deletion...but is it really something we need to worry about?  We don't know as we can't see the data.  So this would be a very insightful report.

 

Thanks
Tim

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Level 1

12/12/10

I also think that this would be a very insightful report too. Specially for mobile sites... certain phones block 3rd party cookie by default making the number of UB's inflate...

 

Whilst I can track through a prop/ eVar who accepts cookies and who doesn't I don't get the age of the cookie and I have to manually implement that....

 

It would be much easier if Omniture can provide this information since you guys are already collecting it

 

Thank you,

Karina