Cross Site Tracking
Cross website tracking refers to the practice of advertisers, businesses, and other digital agencies and entities tracking your online activity to monitor your browsing habits. The website visited by the user primarily does the tracking, but third-party apps can also gather and access this data.
How Does Cross Website Tracking Work?
So, how exactly do websites track your browsing behavior? Well, any user browsing the web often has trackers pursuing them and keeping a log of every activity. This is achieved with the help of widgets, scripts, or minuscule images embedded on any website user visits.
While visiting many websites, you have surely noticed those social media buttons embedded there. Sure, most of the time, they are included for the sites to gain useful analytics regarding their content. But the concerning issue is they also send your data back to those platforms to create user profiles for targeted advertisements.
Some of the most commonly used web tracking systems and web trackers are:
Cookies
Cookies are the primary tools used by websites in the process of cross-website tracking. It is quite an ingenious concept. You visit a website, and a small packet of data is transferred to your device’s browser courtesy of your web server. This small packet is called a computer cookie aka web, internet, browser, or HTTP cookie. Cookies are designed specially to memorize your browsing information and online activity.
Cookies work in a simple manner:
- The browser requests a web page from the web server
- The server transmits the page along with a cookie
- The cookie gets stored in the hard drive of your device
There are three different types of cookies:
- Persistent cookie
- First-party or session cookie
- Third-party cookie
While the first two types of cookies are generally used to boost your browsing experience by remembering your passwords and language preferences, it is the third type you should be wary of. Persistent cookies come with an expiration date, and session cookies are temporary ones that get deleted with the closing of your browser. But the third-party cookie that keeps track of your online behavior is the tracking cookie.
Web Beacons
Web beacons are used as a single-pixel transparent graphic image by a website to log user behavior. They work similarly to cookies to monitor user browsing habits and navigation for advertising and analytics purposes. One such web beacon is the Facebook Pixel, enjoying a ubiquitous presence in your browsing activities. It tracks almost every aspect of your web browsing activity and aids advertisers in putting up targeted ads for you or others exhibiting similar behavior. Beacons also enable IP address tracking in emails by logging the exact time and date as well as your IP address when you open any mail embedded with a beacon.
Canvas Fingerprinting
The practice of websites deciphering how the user’s browser responds to graphical instructions is known as canvas fingerprinting. Any website with this feature can direct your browser to draw a hidden image. This particular image varies with the individual’s device, graphics card, and hardware settings, resulting in the rendition of a unique image for every user. The distinctive image acts as a unique digital fingerprint for every user and can provide accurate information when coupled with other tracking data.
HTML5, the latest version of the coding language HTML, was developed for animations and drawing graphics on websites. However, it includes canvas fingerprinting, resulting in its co-opting of it as an effective tracking and fingerprinting tool.
What is the Purpose of Cross Website Tracking?
There are many legit reasons for websites to keep track of user activity. Most sites do it to boost website performances and personalize user experience. Let’s say that you are into reading books and watching movies at leisure. So, won’t you prefer advertisements from streaming services and publishing houses over furniture and bedsheets? This is exactly achieved through cross website tracking that allows targeted advertising based on the browsing behavior of any user.
Some of the primary reasons behind cross-website tracking are:
Website Analytics
Almost all websites glean user information by using analytics software to gauge how customers use their site and get visitors’ demographics. Information like how visitors arrive on the site and the number of pages they visit help the owners make important business decisions and optimize the site.
For easier understanding, let us take the example of any news publishing website. When publishers notice that most visitors are hitting upon one story only, they opt for better interlinking between posts. It will make the other stories easily accessible too and increase the website’s overall views and footfalls.
Google Analytics makes for the most commonly used analytics software on the internet. With an estimated client base of 29 million sites, Google Analytics is in use in 88.5% of the top 10,000 sites.
Website Performance
Many websites require some tracking to perform the intended way. YouTube might make the best case for this. When you are watching YouTube videos, you will find the algorithm recommending videos you might want to view next. This feature is only possible because YouTube tracks your behavior on the platform and on other sites to recommend the best possible options for you.
Advertising
User-based target advertising is possibly the primary reason behind cross-website tracking. The adverts you come across on the internet are primarily because of the data collection by websites based on your location, search interests, browser history, and even the time of the day you prefer to visit certain sites. Retargeting is another common practice where you see a barrage of adverts for products similar to something you might have searched for a while ago. To make your ads stand out and capture your audience’s attention, consider using After Effects templates from Videvo. These professionally designed templates can help create visually stunning and engaging advertisements for your brand. By incorporating eye-catching animations and motion graphics, you can elevate your advertising efforts and make a lasting impression on your target audience.
Again, Google has cemented its place at the top with Google AdSense, the largest web-advertising network.
Reference
What is Cross Website Tracking | How to Prevent It? Tracking protection | cookiestatus.com