Rocket Fuel (NASDAQ: FUEL), the leading predictive marketing platform, today announced that it issued its first two patents, both designed to address third-party cookie restrictions. These patents allow advertising technology providers, in partnership with publishers and advertisers, to identify and analyze consumer behavior in order to help brands and advertisers reach and engage with their audiences more effectively.

US Patent No. 9,641,632 -- “Method of Storing a Web User ID in First-Party Cookies” -- gives ad tech providers a way to address third-party cookie restrictions that exist within many types of browsers. With agreement from a publishing partner, ad tech providers can access hard to reach consumer data and browsing activity by storing user data in a publisher’s first-party cookies, after briefly redirecting the browser to the ad tech provider’s server. Once a publisher stores the consumer data, they can be redirected back to the provider with no noticeable impact on the consumer’s browsing experience. In addition, this data can be reported and cross-referenced with data collected from other sources to provide more robust historical browsing information.

US Patent No. 9,691,080 -- “First-Party Cookie Attribution” -- also enables an ad tech provider to benefit from the first party cookies of an advertiser, but with a focus on gaining enhanced attribution data. The advertiser stores ad-tech-partner-specific data in their first-party cookie during each user visit to their website. Later the advertiser shares that data with the ad tech partner to help them reliably measure attribution; that is, which ad(s) were shown that influenced the consumer to make a purchase or take a desired action. With this technology, providers can track a user’s first visit to a publisher’s website through to conversion regardless of how many browsing sessions occur in the interim.

“With more and more ad blocking methods popping up within the industry, ad tech providers find it more challenging to connect directly with consumers on publisher sites,” said Mark Torrance, CTO of Rocket Fuel. “It’s because of this that we wanted to find a way for publishers and technology providers to work more effectively with current cookie technology so that both advertisers and consumers can benefit from more strategic and tailored ad placement.”

“These new patents provide further evidence of Rocket Fuel’s continued investment in technical innovation and our leadership position in the predictive marketing space,” said Randy Wootton, CEO of Rocket Fuel. “It is a great privilege to work with such a talented team of engineers who wake up every day wanting to solve the hardest problems facing the modern marketer.”

To learn more about Rocket Fuel’s predictive marketing solutions, visit www.rocketfuel.com.

About Rocket Fuel

Rocket Fuel is a predictive marketing software company that uses artificial intelligence to empower agencies and marketers to anticipate people’s need for products and services.

Headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., Rocket Fuel has more than 20 offices worldwide and trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol “FUEL.” Rocket Fuel, the Rocket Fuel logo, Moment Scoring, Advertising That Learns and Marketing That Learns are trademarks or registered trademarks of Rocket Fuel Inc. in the United States and other countries.