WTF is piggybacking?

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.

https://digiday.com/?p=469585

More in Marketing

Walmart deepens its metaverse presence with new e-commerce experience selling physical goods on Zepeto

Walmart’s decision to focus on virtual clothing items for its latest foray into the metaverse shows how the company has learned from its previous experiments in the space.

Brands are seeing an influx of traffic from ChatGPT and Google Gemini

DTC brands are grappling with how best to harness the traffic coming from AI chat tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini.

‘I need those home runs’: TikTok viral brands plan a future without the For You Page

Brands that rode a wave of virality thanks to TikTok’s algorithm now grapple with the challenge of recreating virality elsewhere.