The Year in Tech, 2023: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

7 SAY GOODBYE TO COOKIES

by Tim Glomb

For years, companies have been using cookies—small text files stored on the browser that keep track of website visits—to monitor consumers’ online behavior. Cookies can provide rich data that helps brands get a better sense of who their customers are and enables them to target those customers with more relevant offerings. But this personalization comes at a cost: Consumers are increasingly concerned about who is collecting this data, how much of their behavior is being tracked, what companies are doing with that information, and who they may be selling it to.

A Pew report found that 79% of Americans are concerned about the way companies use their data.¹ Forty-one percent of U.S. consumers regularly delete ...