How does demdex calls work when 3rd party cookies are blocked ?

[Pranithakat]

How does demdex call work when 3rd party cookies are blocked ?

How many demdex calls are expected and what are they for ?

[RaawiMahendru]

Hey @Pranithakat 

When disableThirdPartyCookies: true, the ID service does not return the third-party, demdex.net cookie (see Cookies and the Experience Cloud Identity Service ). If a site visitor already has this cookie in their browser, the ID service won’t use it to create a new Experience Cloud ID (MID) or return an existing ID. Instead, the ID service creates a new, random MID in the first-party cookie. Once enabled, you can collect data with the ID service and share it across different Experience Cloud solutions.

[Gokul_Agiwal]

Hi @Pranithakat 

Audience Manager and the Adobe Experience Platform Identity Service make calls to and receive data from the demdex.net domain. This may seem like Adobe is working with an third-party domain, but this is not the case. 

Basically there are 2 call elements, first calls to demdex.net and the second one call to dpm ( data provider match) 

Below link explains what this calls actually does? Understanding Demdex calls

Also I found another nice article that interesting to read - Adobe Audience Manager without 3rd party cookies. 

Hope this helps. 

[Pranithakat]

I see 2 calls to dpm.demdex as shown below on 1st visit when 3rd party cookies are blocked. Can you explain what are these calls doing?

1) https://dpm.demdex.net/id/rd?d_visid_ver=5.2.0&d_fieldgroup=MC&d_rtbd=json&d_ver=2&d_verify=1&d_orgi...

2)https://dpm.demdex.net/id?d_visid_ver=5.2.0&d_fieldgroup=AAM&d_rtbd=json&d_ver=2&d_orgid=9E8F58CC559...

2nd call is setting a demdex cookie. Is this valid when cookies are disabled ?

[Gokul_Agiwal]

Hi @Pranithakat 

The Experience Cloud ID (ECID) service is provided by AAM and the ECID is generated from the UUID.   UUID is unique per browser, the ECID is unique per browser and organization ID.

ECID is using the demdex domain (dpm.demdex.net) for the generation of the ID. This domain is attached to Audience Manager, hence, on some plugins you can see that Audience Manager is used on your domain even if you don't have as license solutions.  

Below is the screenshot that showing these network calls. 

As you know demdex is 3rd party cookie however there are few points that needs to consider regarding UUID 

- Unique per browser

- works on any domain 

- stored in the browser 

The only solution to achieve this is to use 3rd party cookie. If the browser blocks 3rd party cookies, the UUID is still generated and stored in the AAM database.

Another point is that If your project falls under cookie compliance like GDPR / CCPA etc, in that case its completely based on user consent. if user provided consent to all solution then only you can able to see the cookies and calls. 

Now due to recent announcement by Google, blocking all 3rd party cookies in that case this is risk, so mitigate that risk Adobe announced AEP - A new Customer Data platform that solely relied on First party data. Is this correct @NimashaJain 

Hope this helps. 

[Kishore_Reddy]

Really helpful explanation @Gokul_Agiwal 

[Gokul_Agiwal]

@Pranithakat  Is this query resolved? If no then happy to help further

[Pankaj_Sabharwal]

Hi @Pranithakat 

It may seem like Adobe is working with an unusual third-party tool but that’s not the case. Here’s an official documentation from Adobe’s side that explains elements in the demdex call

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/audience-manager/user-guide/reference/demdex-calls.html

When disableThirdPartyCookies: true, the ID service does not return the third-party, demdex.net cookie (see Cookies and the Experience Cloud Identity Service ). If a site visitor already has this cookie in their browser, the ID service won’t use it to create a new Experience Cloud ID (MID) or return an existing ID. Instead, the ID service creates a new, random MID in the first-party cookie. Once enabled, you can collect data with the ID service and share it across different Experience Cloud solutions.

Hope this helps.