How Do Cookies Provide Personalized Content?

Not all cookies are bad. In fact, cookies help websites function properly and give users a seamless browsing experience. Personalized cookies are helpful text files that remember your preferences to offer a tailored browsing experience. Here's how.

That said, personalization has a reputation problem. In All About Cookies' own survey of 1,000 U.S. adults, 87% of people who noticed hyper-personalized ads said they found them creepy or invasive, even though most personalized cookies exist to make browsing smoother, not to spy on you.

What are personalized cookies?

Personalized cookies are a type of first-party cookie, meaning they are used only by the website you're visiting. First-party cookies are website-specific, meaning they are used by the website you're visiting and not for targeted advertising or tracking (like third-party cookies). From remembering your language preferences to saving your online shopping cart items, website cookies tailor your user experience.

For example, say you're shopping on Amazon and looking at several different items. Amazon will track the items you search for and the items you click. It will then use your online behavior to make personalized recommendations.

Types of personalization cookies

Some common types of personalization cookies include:

• Behavioral cookies track your behavior, like pages viewed, items searched, products selected, and links clicked. Streaming services like Netflix rely on this data to decide what shows up on your home screen.
• Recommendation cookies collect and analyze your web activity to offer you personalized recommendations, like a "customers also bought" section on a shopping site.
• Language and site preferences cookies store your preferences to ensure a smooth experience, such as keeping a multi-region site in the language or currency you picked on your last visit.
• Location cookies store your location to make recommendations relevant based on geolocation, like showing nearby restaurants or accurate local delivery estimates.

How personalization cookies differ from tracking cookies

Personalization and tracking often get lumped together, but they're not the same. Personalization cookies are first-party: the site you're visiting sets them, and the data stays with that site to make your experience smoother.

Tracking cookies are usually third-party. They follow you across multiple websites to build a broader advertising profile, which is why you might search for hiking boots on one site and see ads for them everywhere else afterward. That cross-site tracking is a bigger privacy concern than a single site remembering your language preference. 

An example of first-party personalization cookies (video)

The video below briefly explains how a website provides personal content for the user. It does this by recognizing information previously entered into its secure server database, then bringing up past interests for the user to click on.

Click on the video below to learn more.

Video transcript

• Anne requests a web page, [www.website.com](https://www.website.com), to find a cheap flight to London.
• [www.website.com](https://www.website.com) delivers content to Anne together with cookie ID ABC.
• Anne books a cheap flight to London and types in her name, address, and credit card details.
• Anne's name, address, and flight details are transferred to [www.website.com](https://www.website.com), which stores that information in a file in the database on its secure server (with the reference cookie ABC).
• Personal data is not included in the cookie.
• Four Weeks Later: Anne requests the homepage for [www.website.com](https://www.website.com)
• [www.website.com](https://www.website.com) server reads cookie ID ABC and finds Anne's file in its database on its secure server by reference to the cookie ID ABC. Based on the personal information in Anne's file in the database, a personalized message is created and delivered:
• "Hello Anne. Please click here for cheap flights to London for the holiday season."
• Anne reads the requested web page.

Controlling personalized cookies

You don't have to accept personalized cookies to use most websites. Since they're not usually required for a site to function (unlike session cookies), you can decline them when a cookie banner gives you the option, or turn them off later in your browser's privacy settings.

Keep in mind that rejecting personalization cookies mostly changes the experience, not your access. You'll likely see generic content and recommendations instead of tailored ones, and you may need to re-enter preferences like language or location on future visits. 

For a more permanent approach, opt-out cookies can tell a site not to personalize your experience going forward.

Bottom line

Personalized cookies are one of the more helpful types of cookies out there. They're first-party, they stay with the site you're actually visiting, and they're usually just trying to save you time, not build an advertising profile on you.

Still, "helpful" doesn't mean you have to accept every cookie a site offers. If personalized recommendations feel more invasive than convenient, you can decline them without losing access to most websites.

FAQs