What is the VP cookie?
This cookie is used by PulsePoint to identify and match returning users across websites for real-time programmatic ad bidding and targeted advertising.
Table of Contents
About the VP cookie
| Vendor | PulsePoint |
|---|---|
| Cookie Domain | contextweb.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 11.9% 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://www.pulsepoint.com/legal/platform-privacy-policy |
| Vendor Website | https://www.pulsepoint.com |
What is the purpose of the VP cookie?
The VP cookie is a third-party tracking identifier set on the contextweb.com domain, which is owned and operated by the advertising technology vendor PulsePoint. (PulsePoint was formed in 2011 through the merger of ContextWeb - whose legacy contextweb.com domain it continues to operate - and Datran Media, and PulsePoint was itself acquired by Internet Brands, the owner of WebMD, in 2021.) The cookie assigns a unique pseudonymized identifier to the user's browser, which allows the platform to recognize the user across multiple websites, build audience profiles, and synchronize identifiers with partner ad exchanges and demand-side platforms (observed syncing with partners such as Sovrn, OpenX, media.net and Sharethrough).
This tracking facilitates PulsePoint's programmatic advertising exchange and DSP by enabling real-time bidding, cookie matching, frequency capping, audience segmentation, and the delivery of targeted (notably healthcare and consumer) advertisements. The observed part_ value prefix is consistent with a partner/user-matching identifier used during cookie-sync operations.
What are the Privacy Risks of the VP cookie?
Risk Level: High
The cookie is a persistent, third-party identifier used specifically for cross-site tracking, audience profiling, and targeted programmatic advertising. PulsePoint's own privacy policy states it receives and shares pseudonymous personal data (cookies, IP addresses, and other unique identifiers) for advertising purposes, and the observed initiator behavior shows the identifier being synchronized with numerous external ad exchanges and DSPs.
Because it enables behavioral profiling and the sharing of pseudonymous behavioral data with many third parties to facilitate real-time bidding, it carries a high privacy risk. (Note: the underlying data is pseudonymous rather than directly identifying PII, so a 'Medium' rating would also be defensible; 'High' is chosen here due to the breadth of third-party data-sharing/cookie-syncing involved.)
How to Remove the VP cookie from a Website
To remove this cookie, a website administrator must locate and remove any PulsePoint advertising tags, retargeting pixels, conversion tags, or programmatic bidding/cookie-sync scripts from the site's source code or tag management system (e.g., the 'PulsePoint Retargeting', 'PulsePoint HCP365', or related tags that call bh.contextweb.com). If the cookie is being set via a third-party syndication or supply partner (such as Sovrn), those partner tags must also be removed. Because this identifier is integral to PulsePoint's advertising and audience-matching functionality, it cannot be removed without entirely disabling the PulsePoint integration on the site; if PulsePoint's services are required for active campaigns, contact the vendor to confirm whether any account-level configuration can limit the cookie.