What Is a Cookie?
A cookie is a short text file placed in a visitor’s browser by a website. It helps store data like:
- Whether the visitor is logged in
- Items in a cart
- Page visit history
- Consent preferences
- Session or tracking identifiers
Cookies can be:
- Session-based, disappearing when the browser is closed
- Persistent, stored for a defined period
They’re used to power convenience features, but also tracking, analytics, and advertising. This dual use is what led to their role being re-evaluated and restricted.
Why Cookies Are No Longer Enough
Cookies used to be the backbone of tracking for analytics and ads. That’s changed due to:
- Privacy laws like GDPR, CCPA, and PECR
- Browser changes (Safari and Firefox block third-party cookies; Chrome is phasing them out)
- Mobile restrictions (like iOS App Tracking Transparency)
- User awareness and growing demand for data control
As a result, cookies are now just one piece of a broader tracking strategy—and often an optional one.
Do Ad Platforms Still Use Cookies?
Not in the traditional way.
Ad platforms like Google Ads, Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, and others have moved away from relying on third-party cookies. Instead, they now depend on:
- First-party dataInformation collected directly from your website visitors, customers, or users—such as form submissions, purchase history, and behavior on your site. collected directly from websites
- Event-based tracking sent through JavaScript or API calls
- Enhanced conversions, which include user-provided information like email or name to improve attributionThe process of determining which channels, campaigns, or actions contributed to a conversion, helping you understand what influenced a visitor’s decision to take action. accuracy
In most modern setups, platforms use server-side or client-side event tracking that is no longer dependent on browser cookies to function. Cookies might still be used to help with session association, but they are no longer the core of how attribution or targeting happens.
Cookies and WordPress Sites
WordPress itself uses cookies for basic features:
- Logging in
- Remembering comment fields
- Managing session states (like WooCommerce carts)
However, when you add analytics tools or embed third-party scripts (for ads, videos, forms), you’re likely setting non-essential cookies—which often require user consent.
This is where tools like cookie consent banners and privacy-first tracking methods come into play.
How Conversion Bridge Works With (and Without) Cookies
Conversion Bridge is designed for the modern, privacy-conscious web. It provides full flexibility to use or avoid cookies as needed:
- For internal session tracking and conversion journey building, Conversion Bridge lets you choose between using cookies or a privacy-safe fingerprinting method
- It respects your site’s cookie consent settings and doesn’t track users who decline cookies (unless allowed anonymously by your analytics tool)
- It does not require cookies to send events to analytics or ad platforms
Whether you enable cookies or not, Conversion Bridge ensures that meaningful user interactions—like purchases, form submissions, and button clicks—are tracked and delivered to the right tools.
Enhanced Conversions Without Relying on Cookies
Since ad platforms no longer rely heavily on cookies, enhanced conversions have become the new standard. This refers to sending hashed user data like email or name during a conversion event to improve attribution accuracy—especially when cookie tracking is blocked or incomplete.
Conversion Bridge supports enhanced conversions for all supported ad platforms, using JavaScript where applicable and direct API integrations where available. This allows your ad accounts to:
- Match conversions to ad clicks more accurately
- Train their algorithms with better data
- Attribute performance even when third-party cookies are unavailable
This makes Conversion Bridge especially powerful for agencies, ecommerce store owners, and marketers working in regulated or privacy-conscious environments.
Privacy-First Analytics Without Cookies
Conversion Bridge integrates with many analytics platforms that don’t rely on cookies at all, including:
These platforms use first-party, anonymized, or fingerprinted data to give you clear performance metrics without setting traditional browser cookies. Conversion Bridge ensures those tools receive clean, consent-respecting event data from your WordPress site.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. It supports both cookie-based and fingerprint-based internal tracking and sends data to analytics and ad platforms even when cookies are declined (where privacy policies allow).
If they decline, Conversion Bridge will not set tracking cookies. However, it may still send non-personal, anonymized events to supported privacy-first analytics platforms, depending on your configuration.
Instead of relying on a browser identifier, enhanced conversions send user-provided data (like an email address) at the point of conversion. Ad platforms now allow you to use this to match the event to the correct user session—even without cookie data—which Conversion Bridge handles for you.
Cookies are no longer the foundation of modern tracking—and they don’t need to be. The future is consent-driven, privacy-first, and increasingly based on direct, server-verified events.
Conversion Bridge is built for that future. Whether you're tracking conversions, powering analytics, or syncing ad data, it helps you move beyond cookie dependency and into a more accurate, ethical, and resilient model.