Press Releases

Coremetrics Urges Online Marketers to Adopt First-Party Cookies to Achieve Maximum Completeness of Web Data Capture

LIVEmark Data from Coremetrics Shows That 13.8% of Third-Party Cookies Are Blocked, Compared to Less than 1% of First-Party Cookies

San Mateo, Calif. – July 19, 2005 – Coremetrics™, the leading provider of hosted Web analytics and precision marketing solutions, today revealed data from the LIVEmark Index indicating that online retailers leveraging third-party cookies for Web data capture are not obtaining a complete view of online visitor behavior. LIVEmark Index data, collected from more than 150 leading retail brands transacting over $5.3 billion in annual online revenue, shows that 13.8% of traffic to Web sites using third-party cookies was anonymous in May 2005—an increase of 8.3% year over year. Web sites using first-party cookies, on the other hand, recorded an average anonymous traffic rate of just 0.6% during the same period.

"The ability to capture and store Web behaviors in lifetime profiles is critical for eCommerce organizations looking to understand the value of online investments," said Joe Davis, president and CEO of Coremetrics. "When tracking cookies are rejected by such a large group of users, it significantly impacts the size of the population that can be accurately profiled. By migrating to solutions that issue first-party cookies, eCommerce organizations can expand the amount of data they can capture, and the breadth of consumer behavior they can measure accurately."

Coremetrics captures and stores all customer and visitor clickstream activity to build LIVE (Lifetime Individual Visitor Experience) Profiles, the industry's most accurate and complete source of Web visitor behavior data. Anonymous traffic indicates that a user has either blocked cookies or opted out of tracking using a site's privacy policy, disallowing the creation of a customer profile. Leveraging first-party cookies for data collection largely alleviates the challenges associated with visitors blocking third-party cookies, increasing the breadth of the visitor population tracked through customer profiling technologies.

As announced earlier this year, Coremetrics offers e-marketers the only fully managed, backwards compatible first-party data collection service, requiring zero complex software installation or maintenance. Coremetrics technology allows clients to migrate their systems from issuing third-party to first-party cookies without the loss of customer profiles, ensuring continuity and consistency of data capture. More importantly, clients are not burdened with the task of maintaining functional requirements for browser compliance. With Coremetrics handling this, clients can be confident that browser technology changes are properly anticipated and that industry best practices are driving data collection. The Coremetrics first-party data collection solution fully respects visitor privacy by providing an opt-out mechanism.

According to LIVEmark data, a wide cross-section of retail sites—from general merchandisers to high-end speciality stores—should be increasingly concerned about third-party cookie blocking. Anonymous traffic data by LIVEmark vertical for organizations using third-party cookies is as follows:

• Specialty Retailer 16.4%
• Home 15.3%
• Office/Electronics 14.8%
• Gifts 13.8%
• Apparel 13.5%
• Sports/Outdoors 12.8%
• General Merchandiser 12.4%

From this data it is clear that the effects of third-party cookie rejection span a variety of businesses, irrespective of market vertical.

The LIVEmark Index is the industry's most comprehensive benchmark for eBusiness performance, providing critical comparison data for site-wide key performance indicators across more than 110 leading retail brands. Brands currently participating in the index include: 1-800-Flowers, Abebooks.com, Abercrombie & Fitch, Alibris, American Eagle, Bass Pro Shops, Benchmark Brands, Bluefly, Cabela's, Coach, CompUSA, Crutchfield, Eddie Bauer, Hanover Direct, Home Shopping Network, Lands' End, May Company, Northern Tool, Oakley, OfficeMax, Orvis, Petco, RedEnvelope, REI, Sears Canada, Sharper Image, Spiegel, Staples, The TJX Companies, Williams-Sonoma, and Yankee Candle.

About Coremetrics
Coremetrics is the leading provider of on-demand Web analytics and precision marketing solutions, offering the industry's only Web analytics platform that captures and stores all customer and visitor clickstream activity to build LIVE (Lifetime Individual Visitor Experience) Profiles. Representing the single most accurate and comprehensive source of online customer data, LIVE Profiles serve as the foundation for all successful eBusiness initiatives. Leading online brands rely on Coremetrics LIVE Profiles to monitor and optimize the performance of multiple marketing campaigns, improve cross-sell and multichannel initiatives, and precisely target customers through intelligent marketing campaigns. Coremetrics services more than 400 clients and has delivered over $250 million in documented ROI in the past two years. The company is privately held with funding from Accel Partners and Highland Capital Partners and is headquartered in San Mateo , California with offices in Austin , Texas and London, England. To learn more about Coremetrics, visit www.coremetrics.com or call 877-721-CORE.

###

Coremetrics is the trademark of Coremetrics, Inc. Any other marks used in this document are trademarks or registered trademarks of the manufacturers or marketers of the products with which the marks are associated.