The impact of Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention
The biggest impact of Apple’s ITP (so far) occured when ITP 2.1 was released to Safari browsers in late March 2019 which limits client-side cookies to a maximum storage of 7 days.
In short, this means tracking pixels on websites such as Google Analytics and marketing tags will not remember you if you return to the website after 7 days.
By default, Google Analytics uses a cookie with an expiry date of 2 years to remember users (technically, the browsers). With this cut short to 7 days for Safari users, the impact that we can expect to see is increasing “New Users”.
We have been analyzing some of our clients’ Google Analytics data and we can quite clearly see the expected outcome.
So what can we do?
Simo Ahava has detailed a few custom solutions and a few more that you could try. But I feel that this is a cat-and-mouse game and you run the risk of getting penalized.
I believe the future of the internet will be built on these points:
- Privacy by design
- Stateless browsing sessions
Instead of trying to defeat tracking prevention, we should think about building a better internet experience.
Sparkline aims to provide data accuracy, comprehension and consolidation, and most importantly, tangible insights for businesses. Get in touch if you’d like to learn more.
