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More browsers are offering users control over cookies and limiting advertisers’ access to data. Marketers need to keep up-to-date on these shifts and understand how they affect their campaigns.
One such change is ITP2.1. Introduced by Apple in February, it’s the latest iteration of its intelligent tracking prevention technology in Safari. It purges most first-party cookies if a user doesn’t return after seven days and blocks all third-party cookies by default, complicating long-tail measurement in iOS 12.2 and Safari 12.1. Limiting the lifespan of first-party cookies to just seven days is a significant adjustment; prior to ITP2.1, you could rely on a Google Analytics cookie for two years.
ITP2.1 will disrupt your ability to track, analyze, measure, target and personalize content for Safari users. It has the potential to impact several of your tactics including Web analytics, A/B testing, personalization, retargeting, data management platforms and attribution. Here’s how:
Understanding how this change affects your programs is critical to maintaining accurate, reliable data. We’ve developed
a
free tool
that can help. It allows you to measure how much site traffic comes from Safari via desktop, mobile and tablet and shows the average time between user visits to your sites. It plugs into your Google Analytics account and shows you charts with key information to help you make better optimization decisions:
- Web analytics will lose accuracy because site visitors will be forgotten if they don’t return within seven days, inflating the number of unique website visitors
- A/B testing will only have a seven-day window
- Personalization and retargeting will be limited to seven days of behavior
- Data Management Platforms (DMPs) may see an inflated number of mobile devices, exaggerating audience sizes
- Attribution will be more difficult with a shortened window
Understanding how this change affects your programs is critical to maintaining accurate, reliable data. We’ve developed
a
free tool
that can help. It allows you to measure how much site traffic comes from Safari via desktop, mobile and tablet and shows the average time between user visits to your sites. It plugs into your Google Analytics account and shows you charts with key information to help you make better optimization decisions:
- Browser Sessions by Type: Measures how much traffic comes from Safari versus other browsers. The lower the percentage of Safari browser sessions, the less impact ITP2.1 will have.
- Safari Sessions by Version: Measures the sessions affected by ITP2.1 by indicating those from users on iOS 12.1 & Safari 12.1 versus sessions from users on more outdated versions of iOS and Safari. (Only iOS12.1 & Safari 12.1 are affected by ITP2.1)
- Days Since Last Session for Safari Users and Safari Days Since Last Session: Pay attention to the “Greater than 7 days” piece of the pie chart, as those will be your visitors impacted by ITP2.1. Safari will forget them if they don’t return within seven days. Take note of those visitors falling into the five to six-day category, too, and strategize ways to draw them back to your site.
- Safari Sessions by Device Category: Illustrates the number of Safari sessions on mobile, desktop and tablet. The higher the percentage of sessions coming from mobile, the more likely you’ll be impacted by ITP2.1 due to iOS 12.1’s popularity.