Apple introduced what they are calling Intelligent Tracking Prevention for its Safari browser used on desktops and mobile. It is NOT an ad blocker. It restricts how third party cookies are used in Safari. (Third party cookies drop from the websites a user is on where the advertiser’s ad has been placed) This Intelligent Tracking Prevention is a feature for both iOS11 and macOS using Safari’s browser.
What does it do? It restricts the use of third party cookies by deleting them from the user’s Safari browser after a 24 hour time window.
Is this a huge deal? One thing to keep in mind is that this only affects people who are on a device and actively browsing in Safari. Safari has 9% of the desktop browser share. It does have 50% of the mobile browsing share, however, people spend only 8% of their online mobile time in a browser. 92% is spent in apps. So Safari gets half of that 8% of mobile browsing traffic. This does not affect cookie tracking in apps. So, this is not something that will affect an enormous amount of impressions.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/03/u-s-consumers-now-spend-5-hours-per-day-on-mobile-devices/
Does this affect Retargeting from a client’s website? No, it doesn’t. The cookie we drop when someone comes to a client’s website is a “first party cookie” and Apple’s Safari only blocks third party cookies (cookies dropped from websites where the ad appears). A first party cookie means the user was on the website that dropped the cookie on that user. Those remain untouched by Safari, so client website Retargeting us unaffected.
Is this going to affect View Through tracking? Perhaps, but probably not a lot. Let’s say someone sees an ad that is served by us through the Google exchange (one of the primary exchanges we buy on), the cookie that drops will have a Google marker in it and typically people are on a Google service daily (searching, gmail, maps, etc) so that 24 hour cycle will keep getting repeated – and the cookie doesn’t get deleted. Then if the person does Google the client and do a view through to the client’s homepage, that still would track as a View Through.
Is this going to affect Conversion tracking? If the person is converting after coming from a click on the ad, no. If the person is converting from a View Through visit, see above.
Does this affect Behavioral Targeting? Potentially, it could but not in a negative way. If anything it will mean that behavioral cookies from Safari users will be as recent as 24 hours.
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