The #1 reason why you need to look into Fingerprinting

Make media buying great again

Media buying hasn’t been the same since 2017. There are increasingly more problems when it comes to tracking.

All strategies and technologies that marketers use to track their visitors and users must meet the requirements of the GDPR. In this context, tracking through cookies in particular now involves more effort and can be severely limited depending on the situation.

And that’s why a little magic trick called fingerprinting might change your life.

But first of all what is fingerprinting and why do you need it?

What is fingerprinting?

Fingerprinting is a technique to identify a web user without saving information on their device. It is mostly used to track web users a lot more accurately without solely relying on cookies that can be restricted and even deleted by the users.

But how is it different from cookies?

The problem with cookies

Make no mistake, cookies and fingerprinting are two completely different things.

When a visitor first lands on your website, a cookies is placed to store a certain value (unique identifier hash) in the browser. You can then use this information to build a database. And when the visitor returns and has a cookie that matches their previous visit record in your database, you are able to identify those two records as the same visitor. This usually works very well and up until recently, cookies were really reliable.

But there’s a problem: Cookies are now highly regulated and easier to conceal than ever.

What does that mean?

1. Visitors are now entitled to revoke their consent to cookies because of regulations like the GDPR or CCPA. When that happens, you’re not allowed to track them anymore.
2. Cookies can generally be cleared in the web users browser settings. So when that same user returns to your website, you aren’t able to track them anymore.
3. Ad Blockers have become increasingly more popular among web users. They can disable cookies by default and make it more difficult to track people with cookies.

So what about fingerprinting?

The biggest difference between those two is the way they are saved. As already mentioned above, cookies are saved on the web users browser whereas a fingerprint can be saved on the server-side and is a lot more accurate.

So how does it work?

How does fingerprinting work?

Fingerprinting works by using an algorithm to create a unique number (hash) for a web user after collecting a couple of data points (signals). Once this number is created, it stays the same for this device and can be saved.

Let’s break this down a bit.

In order to identify a web user accurately, you need to find a unique trait (fingerprint) to be able to single them out. This is not just one signal like an IP address that can easily be changed when the user relocates or chooses to use a VPN. So you need a combination of a number of signals which create the user’s unique fingerprint that can then be identified over and over again.

But what signals are we talking about exactly?

These can be signals like:

• User agent details (operating system, installed browsers and their versions)
• Hardware details (like screen resolution, device memory and even battery usage)
• Browser and OS settings
• Installed Browser plugins
• WebGL parameters

‍

But how do you collect those signals?

Using Javascript, a bunch of data can be collected about the users web browser and device.

Once you combine those pieces of information you collected, you can create the unique fingerprint.

Of course, this is a bit complicated to get into yourself, but thankfully there are tools like OneTrack out there that will help you to use fingerprinting without having to go through all the trouble yourself.

Accuracy of Fingerprinting

Now we’ve talked about fingerprinting being a lot more accurate than cookies. But how accurate is it really?

At OneTrack we’re striving for the best data accuracy possible. So in order for a fingerprint to be a reliable alternative to cookies, it needs to be highly accurate.

There are two ways that users can be tracked inaccurately with:

1. a false positive fingerprint, i.e. multiple unique visitors are given the same fingerprint or
2. a false negative fingerprint: one visitor over multiple visits is given different fingerprints

So in order to reduce those false positive and false negative fingerprints, you need to combine lots of signals and also the right combination of signals that can assure a unique and stable fingerprint. A highly unique signal will reduce your chances of a false negative fingerprint, whereas stable signals will reduce your chances of a false positive one.

‍

Now does that mean that you have to ditch cookies overall?

No, of course not.

In general, we think that the more tools you can you and the more data you are able to track and compare, the higher the possibility of creating a highly accurate database.

But using a reliable fingerprinting tool will definitely get you to the next level of the media buying game!

How do you use Fingerprinting?

Now all of this might sound a little bit complicated. And how should you know how to use it?

But no need to worry!

We have been looking for an easy solution that helps our clients to get their old tracking results back.

Luckily, we found one: OneTrack!

OneTrack’s Fingerprinting tool has an incredible tracking accuracy of over 99%.

And the best part: You don’t have to worry about integrating it yourself because our tech team is doing it for you!

Do you want to be able to track and retarget your ideal customers like back in the old days?

Then OneTrack is the perfect solution for you! Simply schedule your free consultation today and stop wasting your money on ads that don’t work anymore:

https://www.one-track.io/pricing