“Can We Put a Cookie on Your Site?”
If you’ve been in the industry for quite some time, you’ve probably come across these 2 phrases often enough followed by a frown. And chances are you don’t have the heart to correct fellow online marketers either:
“Can we put a cookie on your site.”
“We will just drop a pixel when they convert.”
These two are in fact very different things but functions similarly. So for those of you, who already know exactly what they are, just skip this blog post. Otherwise, here’s a fast quickie:
A pixel gets imbedded onto the page you want to track. It’s basically an image file that is really tiny at 1 by 1 pixel and requires a server request to render. Hence, provides tracking data.
A cookie on the other hand is a file that the server places on your computer or device that you’re using to browse the internet. Cookies go by session and are used by many online marketing tools to track web usage data.
So you couldn’t really place a cookie on a website page but you can place a pixel. And you couldn’t really drop a pixel, but you could a cookie. …makes sense?
