What is the ad-id cookie?
This cookie is set by Amazon Advertising to register user actions and target them with personalized advertisements based on their behavior across multiple websites.
Table of Contents
About ad-id
| Vendor | Amazon |
|---|---|
| Cookie Domain | amazon-adsystem.com |
| Category Category The functional category of the technology, such as Web Analytics or Social Media. Learn more | Advertising & Paid Media |
| Consent Category Consent Category The consent category this cookie most commonly falls under across sites we scan, normalized into four standard categories. Learn more | Targeting & Advertising |
| Prevalence | Very Common |
| Popularity Popularity Popularity is calculated from our dataset of 4.5B+ cookies analyzed across hundreds of millions of web pages. Learn more | Found on 14.2% of scanned pages |
| Expiration Type | Timestamp |
| Expiration Duration | 30 days |
| Party Type Party Type Whether the cookie is first-party or third-party. Learn more | 3rd-Party |
| Risk Level Risk Level Rates how sensitive the data stored by this cookie is (High, Medium, or Low) based on data classification and distribution. Learn more | High |
| Vendor Privacy Policy | https://advertising.amazon.com/legal/privacy-notice |
| Vendor Website | https://advertising.amazon.com |
What is the purpose of ad-id?
The ad-id cookie is a third-party tracking identifier set by the Amazon Adsystem (via the Amazon Advertising tag). It is utilized to assign a unique Amazon ad system identifier to the user's browser, which allows Amazon to track their interactions with ads and affiliate links, measure conversions, and deliver personalized, interest-based advertising across different websites. By storing this unique identifier, Amazon can associate the user's cross-site activity, website activity timestamps, and advertisement interactions to construct an audience profile for programmatic ad delivery and attribution measurement.
What are the Privacy Risks of ad-id?
Risk Level: High
The ad-id cookie is assigned a High risk level because it is a persistent, third-party identifier used explicitly for cross-site tracking, programmatic ad delivery, and behavioral profiling by Amazon Advertising. As a major advertising technology vendor, Amazon leverages this identifier to monitor user interactions across different sites, build detailed audience segments, and deliver personalized interest-based advertisements. This widespread cross-domain tracking inherently poses substantial privacy risks to end users by systematically monitoring their web activity.
How to Remove ad-id from a Website
To remove the ad-id cookie, website administrators must locate and remove the Amazon Advertising tag or Amazon Ad tag pixel from their website's source code. If the Amazon tag is deployed via a Tag Management System (such as Google Tag Manager), the specific tags making requests to the s.amazon-adsystem.com or aax-eu.amazon-adsystem.com endpoints must be deactivated or deleted. Since this cookie is an inherent part of the Amazon Ads conversion and measurement tracking, it cannot be disabled independently without removing the vendor's tracking script entirely.