Cookie Usage & Tracking Across Generations

Generational Buying Power in 2025

Buying power influences businesses’ and marketing teams’ decisions at all levels. Knowing which audience segments are most likely or able to purchase will directly influence who businesses choose to target with marketing campaigns.

When it comes to generational buying power, Baby Boomers still take the lead. Recent data shows that Boomers are currently outspending both Millennials and Gen X, a trend likely to continue for the next five to ten years.

A 2024 study found the following:

• Baby Boomers spend a total of $548.1 billion annually.
• Gen X has $357 billion in annual spend.
• Millennials have $322.5 billion in annual spend.
• The Silent generation (ages 76 years and older) spend $162.9 billion annually.

Why the significant variance in spend between generations? There are multiple factors influencing each generation’s behaviors.

First, Boomers are working longer than previous generations. This may be partially due to relatively high debt amongst Boomers, with their average credit card debt being second only to Gen X, and their mortgage debt having also increased in recent years. This may be due to increased costs of living, particularly the rising costs of medical expenses. As a result, this generation is working more (and longer) to manage higher debt than previous generations had at their age.

Second, as Boomers are working longer, a notable share of Millennial and Gen X women are at least temporarily leaving the workforce. An important reason for this may be the rising costs of childcare and adult care. Women are still more likely to serve as caregivers, and more Millennial and Gen X women are finding themselves part of the Sandwich Generation, responsible for the care of both minor children and aging parents.

Both Millennial and Gen X workers are breaking long-established employment traditions. Gen X women are currently the most likely demographic to quit conventional jobs and start their own entrepreneurship ventures to pursue financial independence.

On that note, 65% of Millennials feel that retirement isn’t defined by age, but by financial independence from traditional employment. Millennials have lower credit card debt than Baby Boomers and Gen X generations, though a recent study found that 50% of Millennials surveyed said they were “house poor,” restricting their discretionary spending.

Finally, it’s important to note that Gen Z is an “up and coming” generation, as they’re just now reaching an age where they’re more financially independent or have disposable income. It’s estimated that they’ll ultimately contribute more wealthy people to every region of the world than other current generations.

Where the money is going

Generational spending varies significantly based on industry. For example, Porch Group Media’s study found that Gen X had the highest average annual dollar spend in the automotive industry, while Gen Z outspent other generations in travel, retail, and restaurant industries.

^{Image source: https://porchgroupmedia.com/blog/generational-consumer-shopping-trends/}

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Platform Adoption: 2025 Trends

Consumer behavior patterns shift quickly, especially with new platforms, features, and user priorities constantly evolving.

When it comes to platform adoption, younger generations— currently including Millennials and Gen Z users— are typically among the first to try a new social media or web platform. They generally lead their older counterparts in terms of net technology adoption and adopt technology faster. However, members of the older generations eventually do adopt new tech, at least in part.

Gen Z, for example, was first on the scene with TikTok, with Millennials following in large numbers quickly after. Now, several years later, Gen X is increasing adoption of the platform.

All of this said, let’s look at what we know about current platform adoption and usage trends by generation.

Gen Z

Gen Z consumers are prolific digital and social media users.

• They often use TikTok to make purchases and, increasingly, use it as a replacement for Google Searches.
• Gen Z makes up the largest share of Instagram users, and it’s their second choice platform for product discovery after TikTok.
• They often use YouTube for education and community participation by sharing videos with others, engaging with creators and fellow viewers, and participating in discussions.

Millennials

Millennials were the first generation to grow up alongside the development of the internet as we know it today, which shapes their current media preferences.

• Millennials use Instagram heavily to connect with others, making up a large share of Instagram users overall.
• They also use social media for a wide variety of purposes, including product research and job hunting via LinkedIn.
• Millennials are often enthusiastic first-adopters of new platforms and evolve their social media behaviors over time.

Gen X

Gen X are most likely to use established social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest.

• They primarily use Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends, and receive their news.
• 70% of Gen X users will hop onto YouTube for entertainment purposes.
• They care greatly about brand reciprocity and like to see brands that respond to customers.
• They’re more likely to value “authentic” content that doesn’t feel “too polished.”

Baby Boomers

Baby Boomers typically aren’t early tech adopters, and like Gen X, they’re most likely to use platforms that have been established for a while.

• They use Facebook to connect to family and friends and are increasing their usage of Instagram.
• Amazon is often a preferred purchasing platform.
• They are less likely to use platforms like Pinterest, TikTok, and YouTube than all other generations.
• They spend the most time with television compared to other generations, making traditional marketing methods a strong option for reaching them.

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Tracking Cookie Acceptance Rates

Just as user behavior and platform adoption shifts across different demographics, cookie acceptance does, too. Understanding cookie usage is essential to creating strong cross-channel marketing strategies and effectively tracking attribution data.

A recent study found that 38% of Americans blindly accept internet cookies, but just under half expressed confidence that they understood what cookies were or how they worked.

In terms of cookie acceptance data, we know that the younger the user is, the more likely they are in general to accept cookies indiscriminately. A 2024 eMarketer study found the following generational breakdowns of consumers who said they “always” or “often” accept first-party cookie notifications:

• 57.6% of Gen Z
• 53.4% of Millennials
• 46.8% of Gen X
• 36% of Boomers

Asking users to opt-in to third-party cookie tracking, however, has lower acceptance rates. This can be attributed to changes like Apple’s iOS 14.5 update, which asks users if they want to allow tracking with third-party cookies. The opt-in rate for iOS users hovered around 25% for mobile users in 2022, putting it markedly below what all generations would accept for first-party cookie tracking.

This is worth noting. While third-party cookies aren’t being fully removed on major platforms like Google, they are changing. Brands should avoid relying exclusively on third-party cookie data, and consider alternative marketing and attribution strategies that leverage first and zero-party data for retargeting.

Privacy vs. Personalization

Understanding the balance between data privacy and personalization of the user experience— or at least the consumer perception of it— is essential to understanding generational divides on cookie tracking.

The majority of American consumers have concerns about data privacy when interacting with brands online. In general, the concern for privacy is significant across all generations, with 82.7% of 18-24 year olds expressing concern about data privacy and 87.8% of those 55-65 saying the same.

This is consistent with non-cookie online behavior, with more Boomers (31%) using ad blockers to protect data privacy compared to their Gen Z (27%) counterparts.

While all generations consistently have data privacy concerns, younger generations, however, are much more likely to prefer personalized experiences. This may impact how they feel about cookie-usage despite having concerns around data privacy.

One study found that Millennials are the most likely to switch product or service vendors in search of better personalization, with 41% of consumers willing to make the switch compared to 34% of Gen Z and 26% of Gen Z. However, only 44% of consumers overall found that the offers were “very relevant” to them, meaning that many companies are failing to meet their customer’s expectations—even with cookie targeting.

So while 45% of Baby Boomers surveyed said they value privacy over personalization, 64% of Millennials value customized experiences compared to privacy concerns. This desire for relevant experiences tailored to their individual needs is likely a worthwhile tradeoff for younger generations, explaining the disparity in cookie usage despite all generations having significant concerns about data privacy.

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What This Means for Marketers

Each generation has their own unique digital preferences and consumer behavior patterns— and that won’t change anytime soon. As a result, businesses need to create a full-funnel approach to meet each audience segment where they’re at, allowing you to engage at the right moment.

Developing an effective full-funnel strategy must include the following:

• Determine who your customers are. Use zero-party (e.g. CRM data) and first-party (e.g. website analytics tools) data to uncover insights about your customers and site visitors. Consider segmenting the insights data based on products purchased and/or purchase value to determine if there are common traits between cohorts of customers of specific products or high value purchase orders. Once you have identified distinct segments, you can create dedicated marketing strategies for each.
• Leverage customer data to inform strategies. Using demographic (i.e. users’ age, gender, family status…etc), psychographic (i.e. users’ values, attitudes, reason for purchasing…etc), and lifestyle & interest insights data is the most effective way to create cross-generational strategies. These insights can be leveraged to define your target audience(s), inform advertising channels and targeting strategies that are most likely to reach the intended target audience(s), as well as creative messaging for each segment.
• Use diverse targeting strategies. When considering strategies to reach certain audience segments at different stages of the funnel, across web environments, you should include a variety of future-proofed targeting strategies that are not reliant on third-party cookies. These include Google’s Privacy Sandbox, Deterministic IDs, Probabilistic IDs, Contextual, and Predictive Contextual Audiences.

For example:

To reach a specific target audience higher up in the funnel, who has not yet visited your website, consider the following:

• Leverage third-party audience data solutions that have appended their segments to deterministic and/or probabilistic IDs.
• Work with a DSP that can make third-party audience segments available for targeting within Google’s Protected Audience API (PAAPI). Click here to learn more about NextRoll’s industry first activation of Audigent’s audience data within PAAPI on the AdRoll DSP.
  • Bonus points if the DSP can use all three of the techniques listed above interchangeably to maximize reach across all browser environments.
• Include contextual or predictive contextual audience targeting strategies to reach the intended target audience without the need for any IDs.

To reach audiences lower in the funnel, who have visited your website, consider the following:

• Leverage deterministic and probabilistic ID solutions that have industry leading coverage across the supply landscape, in the region(s) you plan to reach the intended audience.
• Work with a DSP that can make your website visitors available for re-targeting within Google’s PAAPI. Click here to learn more about NextRoll’s contribution to, and testing of, the PAAPI specs.
  • Bonus points if the DSP can use all three of the techniques listed above interchangeably to maximize reach across all browser environments.

Reach more audience segments with advanced marketing campaigns. Discover the expert guide on how to leverage zero-party and first-party data strategies for improved reach.