The Atlas Institute, research arm to ad serving company Atlas, recently published a Digital Marketing Insights report entitled, “Is the Sky Falling on Cookies?” The study was done in response to many other recently published studies that claim the deletion of cookies, small pieces of software identifying information that track user activity online, is rampant and a threat to online advertisers who need to know which ads to serve to people and what those people after clicking on an ad. The Atlas study, which did not just query people on their cookie deletion habits but matched survey response with actual user behavior gleaned from its 100 billion monthly served impressions, clicks and page views, found 56 percent of those who claimed to have deleted cookies at least monthly actually deleted them at intervals between 45 and 59 days.
Relating this behavior to ad response and conversion, the Atlas study cited past analysis has shown between 70 and 90 percent of conversions (click, visit, buy) occur within 24 hours of a cookie-placed click or impression making weekly cookie deletion almost a non-issue. Read the full report here.
