Recently, Apple announced the implementation of Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) 2.0 for its Safari browser. This will be released along with iOS12 and MacOS Mojave around September or October 2018. In short, this update will limit the possibilities to track consumer data for marketing purposes. With nearly one in five mobile using Safari and a 5% market share for desktop, this is a change that anyone in the online marketing industry should take very seriously. Furthermore, the update reflects both the growing consumer awareness and tighter legislation (GDPR and e-Privacy) in relation to online privacy – so other browsers are bound to follow soon. However, there is no reason to panic, as we have the solutions for you. Let us explain.

 

Cookies in Third Party Redirections

The main restriction that ITP 2.0 confronts the online marketing industry with is that any cookies dropped via a third party redirecting domain are likely to be obstructed. This means it will become very difficult to track any traffic using a tracking domain that is not related to the domain on which your website or application is located, something that most tracking technologies do today. However, with Ingenious Technologies, you can apply first party tracking, which allows you to avoid this restriction. The cookies we use for tracking purposes are dropped via the same domain as the one on which your website or application is located. ITP 2.0 will accept these cookies, because they are clearly related to the content consumers are looking for.

We are aware that you may wish to use other tracking technologies on top of the one provided by Ingenious. Typically these technologies are third party by nature, as the user is redirected via a domain that isn’t yours, and will therefore be affected by ITP 2.0. In this case, we would encourage you to contact the relevant tracking providers to find out how they will tackle ITP 2.0. As for us, we can assure you that our tracking will not be affected by any additional redirecting, even if it is called via a third party domain.

 

Collecting Data Through Embedded Third Parties

For the other major challenge ITP 2.0 represents, i.e. the restrictions imposed on embedded third parties that want to collect data, Ingenious Technologies also offers a good solution. This restriction involves tracking codes embedded in your website or app via the container of your main tracking solution. These tracking codes usually belong to publishers or networks who need them, in order to optimize their own marketing efforts or to allocate costs. As these codes are third party by nature, you may run into a situation where ITP 2.0 obstructs these codes from being fired.

Ingenious Technologies allows you to fire these codes via our tracking server, thus preventing ITP 2.0 from interfering. The data your publishers and networks need is transmitted via our first party tracking code. This not only helps you avoid issues with ITP 2.0, it also gives you complete control on what consumer data your publishers and networks collect. This solution comes with one restriction: the server-to-server delivery method can only be used for image codes, not for JavaScript. If you work with publishers and networks who work with JavaScript, we advise you to contact them and ask them how they deal with ITP 2.0.

 

To find out how you can enable server-side delivery of embedded third party tracking codes, please read this article in our documentation. A comprehensive article on our first party tracking solution can be found here can be found here. Of course, if you have any questions relating to this topic, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us through your preferred support channel. In the meantime, we will stay on top of this issue. We will also keep an eye on how other browsers respond to these developments, all to make sure we continue to provide the technology you need to stay in full control of your data.