The average third-party cookie rejection rate increased more than fourfold in the past 16 months, from 2.84 percent of website visitors in January 2004 to 12.4 percent in April 2005, according to the study.
Adult and mainstream sites use third-party cookies to measure a site's unique visitors and the effectiveness of its campaigns. By rejecting these cookies, users skew results.
Privacy concerns and the ease of rejecting third-party cookies built into browsers and other software, including Windows XP, has driven this trend.
“The growth in Internet users rejecting third-party cookies is certainly not something that can be ignored by analytics providers or the organizations that rely on those numbers to manage their businesses,” WebTrends CEO and President Greg Drew said.
WebTrends, in its study, recommends switching to first-party cookies, which would be generated by the original server hosting a website. Most surfers allow first-party cookies without issue, as they enable functionality on websites.
