Exciting news and interesting possibilities. I have long been concerned about the reliability of cookie tracking, even before some of the recent news stories came out. I have heard reports from merchants and affiliate managers that as high as 40% of affiliate sales in certain programs are not tracked due to cookie issues.

The technology, based on Macromedia’s Flash, is getting attention as awareness spreads of an apparent increase in user deletion of cookies. A JupiterResearch study recently found nearly 40 percent of Web users clear these text files from their machines on a regular basis. Because of the enormous consequences of cookie deletion for online marketing, analytics experts and ad technology vendors have since begun overtly addressing the potential of the “Flash cookie.”

The technology is based on a feature of Flash MX called “local shared objects” (SOs), which can easily be placed on a user’s machine by adding a piece of Javacript to a Web page. SOs are similar to cookies in concept and function. The main difference is Web users don’t know what SOs are, and are therefore unlikely to delete them. Additionally, commercial anti-spyware applications do not typically block these files, as they do cookies…

… The company’s platform is called PIE, which stands for Persistent Identification Element. For use of the platform, UV charges a .03 CPM.

“What we have done is made SOs very easy and practical to use,” said Mookie Tenembaum, the company’s chief executive. “What it does is make the cookie persistent. If they use the PIE system, it’s a Javascript tag they put on the page, then the cookies are never erased for purposes of identification.”

Tenembaum added, “Instead of cookies now you have a PIE.”

Could this be the solution? I am tired of having people eat our cookies and I *like* pie!

Here is the full article:
Frenzy Begins Over Cookie Alternative