Join us Dec. 1-3 in New Orleans for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit
This article is a WTF explainer, in which we break down media and marketing’s most confusing terms. More from the series →
Piggyback rides can be fun for children. For website operators, not so much.
Piggybacking — also known as cookie-syncing — is how an ad tech firm can drop a third-party cookie on a website’s visitors without being granted access by the website via another ad tech firm that the website has granted access, as covered in the explainer skit above.
An issue with this third-party tracking daisy-chain is that it makes it difficult for website operators to rein in outside companies’ abilities to collect information about their audiences, which risks putting the operators in privacy regulators’ crosshairs.
More in Marketing
Backlash grows against AI slop, but marketers remain unfazed
Marketers dismiss the rise of “AI slop” backlash, betting that authenticity and quality will ultimately engage audiences.
A shorter shopping window complicates retail’s already challenging holiday season
This season, retailers and shoppers alike are contending with a shorter holiday shopping window — on top of tariffs, waning consumer sentiment and recession fears.
How Reckitt is beating the AI odds with its approach to pilots
Most AI pilots fail miserably. Reckitt’s Bastien Parizot explained how the CPG brand has avoided that fate as it deploys gen AI into its global marketing operation.