With Apple already barring the use of third-party cookies on its Safari web browser, Mozilla Firefox quickly following suit, and Google announcing that it will phase out third-party cookies as well come 2023, many companies are concerned about how this will affect their marketing efforts and if it will hinder their lead generation strategies.

However, the elimination of third-party cookies will not make it impossible for you to reach new audiences or target specific audiences. In fact, using a lead generation software, the process will continue to be easy.

We’re here to clarify what cookies are exactly, but also whether it will impact the information and data we provide you (hint, it won’t).

First-party cookies vs. third-party cookies: What’s the difference?

Let’s start with the basics. First-party cookies are small packets of data issued by your website every time a user visits your platform directly. This data includes aspects such as logins and usernames, user behaviour and language settings.

First-party cookies make your web browsing experience more comfortable. Without them, a website would treat you like a first-time visitor every time you loaded a new page. For example, without first-party cookies, you would not be able to buy multiple items at the same time because the cart would reset after every item that was added. Because of this, first-party cookies are considered essential and will not be going anywhere in the near future.

Third-party cookies, on the other hand, are created by websites other than the one you’re visiting. By embedding an external JavaScript code within your website, for reasons beyond this article, marketers, advertisers and social networks can track you across different domains and monitor your online activity. Allowing them to build a digital profile of you based on your search habits and interest so they can serve you more relevant content and ads.

For example, if you have a “Like” button on your website, this cookie can not only be accessed by you but also by Facebook who can later see which websites a user visited and interacted with.

How Leadinfo uses cookies

Leadinfo helps you identify anonymous website visitors to ultimately give you more and better leads than your competition. How do we do this? By capturing a visitor’s IP address and linking it to our database, which sources information from local chambers of commerce. We do not use any cookies to build our company profiles.

To showcase your company’s analytical data and enable features such as screen recording, we place two first-party cookies, which only our clients get access to. If you’re interested in the logistics, here are the first-party cookies we use:

• “_li_id.xxxx” is a first-party cookie to determine if a visitor is a new or a returning user.
• “_li_ses.xxxx” is a first-party cookie to determine which pages have been visited during their session.

These cookies are not linked to other information, and nothing is shared with third parties. So the elimination of third-party cookies will not impact you, the data you receive from us or the amount of information our software provides you.

Leadinfo's cookieless option

However, we also offer a cookieless version of our software. If you wish to opt out, simply go to your settings within the Leadinfo Inbox and select “disable cookies” under the “Trackers” header. Then, won’t place any first-party cookies on your website. Instead, we’ll collect data by analysing a user’s web browser. But this will impact your user experience:

• How sessions are shown in the company profile – Without cookies, it will be difficult to separate different sessions from the same website visitor. Meaning that all website visits from one day could end up grouped together as one session.
• Screen recording – You will not be able to use screen recording if you enable cookieless tracking.

Should you explain Leadinfo cookies to your customers?

The cookies we use require no consent. Under the laws relating to the use of cookies, your company is permitted to place them if they are used for internal analytical purposes and if the user’s privacy is respected. Our cookies meet these criteria’s so you don’t need to communicate about them to your customers.

Business as usual

First party cookies are essential to the browsing experience and would make the digital environment a very unfriendly space if they did not exist. The elimination of third-party cookies is to prioritise consumer privacy in an increasingly digital world. However, your marketing, personalisation and sales efforts can still yield high results. By using fully compliant lead generation software, you have hundreds of leads at your fingertips and can easily reach out to them via LinkedIn, Google Adwords or by simply phoning them.