Udemy

Overview

Udemy is one of the world's largest online learning marketplaces, with over 210,000 courses across technology, business, creative, and personal development disciplines. Udemy operates both a consumer marketplace (udemy.com) and a B2B platform (Udemy Business) for corporate training. On third-party partner and affiliate websites, Udemy's embedded scripts enable course discovery widgets, affiliate conversion tracking, and referral attribution — allowing content publishers and affiliate partners to earn commissions on course enrollments driven by their traffic.

What This Script Does

Udemy scripts on third-party sites load primarily from udemy.com and udemycdn.com domains. The integration type determines which scripts are present.

Course Widget Component:

• Renders embedded course cards or catalogs displaying course thumbnail, title, rating, price, and enroll CTA
• Loads course data via API calls to udemy.com/api-2.0/courses/ for real-time pricing and availability
• Users clicking "Enroll" or course titles are directed to udemy.com with partner tracking parameters appended

Affiliate Attribution and Tracking Component:

• Cookie: ud_firstvisit — persistent first-touch attribution cookie, first-party under udemy.com domain, 30 days; records that the user's first visit to Udemy originated from a specific affiliate partner; used for last-click vs. first-touch attribution disputes
• Cookie: ud_affiliate_[partnerid] — persistent affiliate referral cookie, 7–30 days; stores the affiliate partner ID and referral timestamp; enables Udemy to credit the referring partner when a delayed purchase occurs within the attribution window
• Cookie: _uetsid, _uetvid — Microsoft/Bing UET cookies loaded via Udemy's own marketing stack on udemy.com pages; appear when the partner redirect lands on Udemy
• Affiliate tracking parameters appended to URLs: affclearsale, pmtag, deal_code (promotional discount parameters), couponCode

Data Collected on Partner Sites:

• Page URL and referrer at time of widget impression
• Course card click events (which course was clicked, position in widget)
• Outbound click to Udemy (timestamped, with partner ID and course ID)

Data Collected on Udemy.com After Redirect (via affiliate tracking):

• Purchase completion: course purchased, transaction value, coupon applied
• This is transmitted back to the affiliate platform for commission calculation

Udemy Business Integrations:

• Corporate Udemy Business implementations may embed single sign-on (SSO) components and LTI-based course launchers; these set authentication session cookies under business.udemy.com

Udemy, Inc. is a US company (San Francisco). GDPR DPA available. Udemy participates in the EU-US Data Privacy Framework for transatlantic data transfers.

Consent & Compliance

Udemy's embedded scripts span functional and marketing categories. The course preview widgets serve a functional informational purpose. However, the affiliate attribution cookies (ud_firstvisit, ud_affiliate_[partnerid]) with 7–30 day persistence constitute marketing technology — they monitor cross-site user journeys to attribute commercial conversions to referring partners. Under GDPR Article 6(1)(a) and Article 5(3) ePrivacy Directive, the affiliate attribution cookies require explicit opt-in consent. Under CCPA/CPRA, affiliate tracking data linking identifiable user sessions to commercial transactions constitutes personal information; sharing this with Udemy's affiliate infrastructure may constitute "sharing" under Cal. Civ. Code §1798.140(ah) when tied to behavioral advertising purposes.

Should You Block This Without Consent?

Conditional. Course preview widgets may function without consent if attribution cookies are not loaded. However, if the integration relies on affiliate tracking and referral cookies for commission attribution, the full script should be blocked until marketing consent is obtained. Udemy Business SSO integrations serving authenticated enterprise users may qualify as functional.