The ad tech world has, for some time, relied heavily on cookies to drive business, but it is common knowledge that the use of cookies is not without its issues. With regulators cracking down on non-compliant consent mechanisms, cookie consent rates from website users are plummeting. Will new technologies offer a future where the interests of individuals and advertisers are balanced more satisfactorily? A future where we can live in a world free from the tyranny of the cookie pop ups? Or is the situation a little more nuanced than that?

Where did it all start?

According to ‘An Empirical Study of Web Cookies’(1) (the Web Cookie Study) cookies were invented in 1994 to enable “state to be maintained between clients and servers”. This allowed a website to, for example, ­recognise a repeat visitor and remember user preferences.