The working group was established in September 2012 to explore potential alternatives to assume the cookie’s role. In collaboration with the IAB Mobile Marketing Centre of Excellence, the group has released a whitepaper: “Privacy and tracking in a post-cookie world.”

The report looks at the challenges of the cookie, including slower page-load times and concerns of data leakage. With privacy a key concern in recent times, as well as the issue of tracking users across different devices, the paper established a number of key needs for each ‘participant’ in cookie use (publishers, consumers and third parties). It also looked at five solution “classes” (device-based, client-based, network-based, server-based and cloud-based) that could be potential replacements for the cookie – evaluating each against the needs of the participants.

The full report can be downloaded here.