Well, it's not who you'd think, that's for sure. This was a fairly unscientific study consisting of loading the main homepage for each of the comScore Top 25. Some cookies may be a recurrent part of the page, some may be caused by the specific ads that happened to load up, but there we are, the fact that the Cookie Law now in effect (since May 2011) in UK means I should have had the right to refuse any cookie still applies.
If the site was a login-type site (e.g. linkedin, facebook), I didn't log in - then you would reasonably expect to be cookied up, of course.
First of all - none of these sites had any kind of visible alert about the use of cookies. There may well have been something in a privacy policy, but nothing at all on the homepage, let alone a pop-up, interstitial or footer bar.
There are 4 of the 25 that in fact drop NO cookies on arrival to the page. So these are the good guys. Wikipedia.org of course, but otherwise, not who you might think: facebook.com, search-results.com and...thepiratebay.org.
Equally, in the worst offenders for spamming cookies into your browser without so much as a by-your-leave are some nice reputable firms: guardian.co.uk (drops 12 cookies), independent.co.uk (13), play.com (15) and autotrader.co.uk with a whopping 17 cookies!
The most popular cookies stand out - 12 of the sites (or the ads upon them) use DoubleClick, 11 use Google Analytics, 8 use Audience Science and 7 use Omniture. A few things are striking - how prevalent Audience Science is, how few 'normal' ad networks there are and how long the tail is of niche little optimisation doohickeys.
Check out the full list if you have a mind to.
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