Companies Tool up for 'Cookie Free'

In separate developments today, two companies - digital advertising firm CPX Interactive and device identification tech specialists BlueCava - have announced new tools for circumnavigating the Euro Cookie Directive, to be enforced from May 25th this year.

In the US, CPX Interactive will leverage its existing technology and its partnership with data solutions company Semcasting to provide customers with a form of IP segmentation which 'segments US residents into approximately 5.2 million IP zones and then scores these zones based on 120 demographic variables culled from every manor of public record.' The company claim that the accuracy gained by using its plug-in will 'have more than three times the potential reach of cookie-based platforms and is 77 times more accurate than traditional zip code geo-targeting.'

Jonathan Slavin, the firm's Chief Revenue Officer said: 'Utilizing our online reach of more than two billion daily ad impressions and our ability to target IP addresses directly, CPX is in a unique position to expand the scope and granularity of audience targeting, By integrating Semcasting's data, we can now offer our agency and advertiser partners the ability to link detailed user demographics to precise locations and create next-level audience modeling and look-alike targeting, all at better than an 80 percent match rate against not only our own direct traffic, but also against RTB and exchange traffic.'

Meanwhile, in London, BlueCava has launched an identification tool which allows its customers to identify and target web users, also without the use of cookies. The tool supports both opt-out and opt-in privacy and will enable companies to collect data about which device their customer is using. The solution works across PCs, smartphones, laptops, game consoles and set-top boxes.

David Norris, CEO of BlueCava said: 'After working with major brands and leading publishers in the EU, we became acutely aware of how the ePrivacy Directive is severely hindering European businesses that rely on cookies. Device identification has surfaced as one of the best ways that companies doing business in the EU can continue to reliably target customers across all devices.'

Both companies are providing creative solutions to a problem the size of which was illustrated last summer when the ICO lost around 90% of its traffic due to compliance with the new law.

The companies can be found at www.bluecava.com and www.cpxinteractive.com .