Apple continues to increase restrictions on user tracking in Safari, including on mobile, where it captures 58% of overall traffic and 66% on iOS devices. These restrictions mean that your current online conversion tracking setup is probably going to be missing a significant chunk of conversions, especially if you have a longer purchase cycle (Travel, Auto, Financial Services, etc). But there are ways to ensure you aren’t losing this valuable data while respecting user privacy. Read on for the full story and how we can help.

What is the context for ITP?

Imagine if every time you saw an ad on a bus, on a billboard, on TV, or in a magazine, you placed a Post-itⓇ note with the ad info on your wall. After a few days it would look something like this:

Photo by Wanda Lotus

Now imagine every website you visit could take a look at that wall, and even some of their partners could see what you’ve been up to. They can use this information to track your purchases and target you with new ads. This is basically the online reality that Google, Facebook, and other ad-driven businesses operate within today.

Apple, perhaps seeing an opportunity for differentiation compared to Google’s Android, has started to portray itself as a safer choice for privacy-conscious users:

Safari ITP: Getting tough with cookies

Safari, Apple’s built-in browser, has a market share approaching 50% on mobile devices. In 2017, Safari released the first version of Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), which limited certain third-party cookie usage to 24 hours, reducing ad retargeting ability and some user tracking methods (i.e., tracking via URL redirection). (Check out our blog post The Winds of Change Are Chilling for Some in AdTech for a look-back on the impact of the original ITP release.)

Perhaps an unintended consequence, these initial limitations on third-party cookies actually reinforced the advantage held by large, established publishers such as Google and Facebook. Because consumers regularly visit those sites directly, they continually receive new cookies in a first-party context, which can be read later on a visit to an advertiser’s website and used to retarget or track the user. (Note: This workflow assumes a Google or Facebook tag is installed on the advertiser’s website, which is commonplace.)

By comparison, virtually nobody visits criteo.com or doubleclick.net directly, so those sites are forever stuck in third-party limbo, and subsequently their cookies are removed by Safari ITP. The ITP crew went on to flag the practice of reading first-party cookies in third-party context as a loophole, and that loophole was closed with ITP 2.0 in September 2018.

Apple didn’t stop there. In March 2019, the ITP team turned their attention to genuine first-party cookies being set or accessed by on-site tracking tags (i.e., set using JavaScript). So we can see that the Safari ITP 2.1 (announced in March) and ITP 2.2 (announced in May) releases are forcing the expiration of these first-party cookies first to 7 days, and then to 1 day respectively.

What are the implications of ITP in Safari 2.1
and Safari 2.2?

1. Measurement. Going forward, Safari will look at how the cookie is being set (via redirect, JavaScript or from the web server). Measurement systems which rely on discouraged approaches will increasingly show purchases as “direct to site” or attribute the entire purchase to the last ad click. You can evaluate the relative conversion rates by browser (i.e., Chrome vs. Safari) to monitor impact. For example, users researching a big ticket purchase like a car or vacation may browse over weeks, but Safari will no longer track these users over subsequent weeks. As you can see below, Marin is providing our customers with actual impact analysis to help marketers understand the issue.
2. Redirects. Measurement systems that use redirects, or third-party cookies, have seen a decline in Safari visitors since last fall with ITP 2.0. Marin has been very active over the past two years in moving our customers over to first-party tracking to ensure that campaign measurement remains intact.
3. Retargeting. Expect retargeting spend on Safari to continue to decline slowly (as the targeting information provided by cookies disappears). These additional ITP releases extend the retargeting prevention to the big publishers like Google and Facebook (previous releases impact focused on third parties).

Sizing the impact

Marin has an ITP Impact Analysis Tool that calculates conversion losses on Safari. These reports show your attributed conversions by time of click, broken out by key browsers and Safari ITP versions, and will showcase a trendline for the conversion lag associated with Safari ITP 2.1.

So what should I be doing?

There are several options to address the reporting gaps exposed by Safari ITP, but we believe the best option is to upgrade your measurement solution.

• Move away from tracking via redirects. Redirects have been considered third-party by Safari for years, but now they’ve moved to close all the tracking/redirecting loopholes. Do not use redirects for new programs and be sure to move to a more modern approach for existing programs.
• Estimate Safari conversions based on Chrome users. This is an easy and low-touch option but raises some accuracy questions. This approach is used by Google, but it often performs differently for mobile users because Safari reaches a younger, more mobile, and more affluent demographic than Chrome.
• Upgrade your measurement source. With the latest iteration of Safari ITP, it’s clear that measurement solutions purely relying on client-side logic (i.e., standard website tracking tags) will no longer work. Marin is able to offer its customers a range of solutions, which require very little implementation from the advertiser. With one of these solutions deployed, you’re guaranteed no impact from the changes in ITP 2.1. (and we can prove it with our monitoring suite).
  
• Hybrid server/client cookies. First-party cookies are set on the server side but sent from the client side. This is a lower-effort approach for advertisers that addresses ITP requirements by moving cookie setting to the advertiser HTTP requests rather than Marin JavaScript. Advertisers without the resources or time to set up the server-side cookies on their own can request that Marin set these via administration (CNAME) and SSL certificate.
• Full server-to-server. This option requires the most effort but is free of all Javascript. Under server-to-server, the advertiser’s web server captures browser data and sends it to a Marin API behind the scenes. Marin processes this data to build and apply the correct attribution model. Marin will provide the logic to be coded.
• 
  

Marin Tracker measures ad effectiveness for each advertiser by looking only at that advertiser’s results. We don’t look at the behavior of a visitor across domains. Given Marin's same-site, first-party design, we couldn't even if we wanted to. We operate within both the spirit (and the rules) of what the ITP team is trying to encourage.


Let’s find the right solution for you and your valued customers. Contact us or ask your Marin account manager how Marin can ensure accurate measurement with the growth of Apple ITP.

Amidst a shaky GDPR rollout, we saw a number of industry changes (in addition to big shifts earlier this year) that impact measurement and tracking:

• Apple announced Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) phase 2.  
• Google will roll out Parallel Tracking this fall.  
• Google deprecated the user ID field from DoubleClick Campaign Manager premium reports, complicating efforts to link a conversion to its ads. Google may even reduce the extra charge for these reports, since they will no longer have a primary key. :-)
• Facebook revoked floodlight tags from their ads.
• AppNexus, The Trade Desk, and AdForm created the Advertising ID Consortium, defined as “people-based interoperability for the advertising ecosystem.” This effort is aimed at creating a standardized ID large enough to offer marketers similar targeting capabilities that the dominant publishers like Google and Facebook provide behind their walled gardens. Bonne chance!

Wow! Using a redirect as a “party loophole” (first from third) will further fall away under Safari. Parallel Tracking will cause redirects to be treated as just another object on the page (and subject to the same first/third party rules). Unlike Facebook and Google, no RTB companies enjoy significant visitor traffic directly to their domains. (When was the last time you visited “adnxs.com”?)

What are the implications of these changes? What options do marketers have to implement an accurate, multi-touch attribution model to measure effectiveness across large publishers?

Goodnight, Floodlight!

According to Google, “Floodlight iframe and image tags are not able to observe all of your conversions.” Instead, Google will estimate Safari conversions by extrapolating results from other browsers—not exactly desirable, as iPhone users are generally more affluent and younger, and represent half of all mobile traffic.

Advertisers can opt to replace floodlights with global site tags. Big spenders can look at the new and complicated Ads Data Hub (ADH) for custom analysis and measurement. ADH data can only be queried in aggregated form, so it can’t be exported for detailed analysis.

And, since large publishers such as Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter don’t contribute, Google will deliver a Google-centric view. Impressions from Facebook, for example, won’t be present. This setup makes it impossible to achieve a transparent and complete multi-touch solution.

The Enterprise Approach

Enterprise multi-touch attribution solutions such as Visual IQ, Ipsos, or Convertro were never easy. Deployments often took a year to roll out and gain predictability. It’s not getting easier—these consumed the DCM log file and/or a pixel-based ID, both of which are increasingly problematic.

Marin’s Stack-Independent Answer to Multi-Touch Attribution Challenges

Marin Software is in the optimization business so our first priority is getting the right data, whatever the source. We integrate with all the Google tracking products, including GA, DCM, 360, and ADH, and have many customers on each. We integrate with enterprise attribution vendors such as Convertro, VIQ, and others, with multiple customers deployed. We integrate with Adobe measurement as well. A number of our larger customers have multiple integration techniques so that they can compare the numbers between different approaches.

Over the years Marin developed our own first-party tracking solution to support customers that had not deployed another system. However, it has evolved into a useful supplemental measurement technology, allowing us to compare numbers across vendors, audit order IDs, analyze converting paths, and better integrate with ad servers such as DCM, Sizmek, and AdForm (to include search and social clicks in those solutions’ reports).

Because Marin Attribution doesn’t do retargeting, it can be first-party. Marin Attribution can re-inflate DCM Data Transfer path to conversion reports back to their original glory, with a user ID present.

Data-Driven Attribution

Marin Attribution interleaves with Facebook-provided converting path data to deliver view-through and cross-device insights, a product offering called Marin TruePath. Because TruePath operates primarily on converting traffic, it’s not suitable for creating attribution models automatically.

However, advertisers can run their existing models against TruePath, or work with Marin to construct models using incrementality testing, also known as data-driven attribution. In our experience, an explicit test-based approach is transparent and more easily explained to senior leadership.

Marin TruePath is lightweight can be implemented quickly. To see our solution in action, be sure to request a demo and we’ll schedule some time for a test drive.

Digital marketing has always been a fast-moving industry. Recent changes by the browser players are creating tectonic shifts that every advertiser and vendor should watch closely. For example, Apple announced Intelligent Tracking Prevention in the summer of 2017 and the ripples hit some ad-tech vendors hard, impacting even large vendors like Criteo.

Three key changes in the browser landscape will challenge the status quo:

1. Apple Intelligent Tracking Prevention
2. Google Parallel Tracking
3. Chrome native ad blocking

Ironically, Apple’s tracking changes will actually help Google and Facebook, who continue to capture virtually all of the growth in digital ad spend. The harsh reality is that this growth will come at the expense of real-time bidding/programmatic display. The changes will directly challenge the core business model of many programmatic exchanges. (On a related note, I expect Amazon to grow and benefit from these trends in 2018 and beyond.)

If you’re not working with the larger publishers, trying to reach your target audience based purely on demographic and behavioral data will be more challenging than ever before. Advertisers should also be aware that accurate targeting and measurement across search, social, and programmatic display will be severely limited for redirect-based solutions (remember that redirects underpin the ad tech stack of many smaller publishers).

Read on for more details on these changes and Marin’s predictions about how they’ll impact the digital marketing landscape for the rest of 2018 and beyond.

Safari ITP

The Change:

At the WWDC last June, Apple announced that upcoming versions of all their operating systems would limit how long cookies would be stored. Dubbed “Intelligent Tracking Protection,” this change restricted all third-party access to cookies for purposes such as advertising and tracking to a one-day window. The cookie can still be referenced for login purposes for 30 days, but it’s no longer available for cross-site tracking. Safari is critical because although its desktop share is low, its presence on iPhone and iPad devices means that Safari’s U.S. mobile market share is over 50 percent—and skews younger and affluent as well.

The Impact:

Since traditional programmatic display is built on third-party cookies, ITP will make it harder for smaller publishers and many third-party ad tech providers to offer audience targeting capabilities based on prior web behavior or browsing patterns.

Does this mean the ads that follow you everywhere around the internet won’t be so persistent? Not really. This change isn’t a big deal for Facebook and Google in the long term, even on Safari; many users visit these sites directly multiple times within a 30-day window, where those publishers can set their own darn cookies! Advertisers will still be able to effectively retarget with Google and Facebook, both on owned and operated sites, and on third-party sites via the Google Display Network/Facebook Audience Network.

Marin has offered a first-party tracking solution for years which is compatible with Safari ITP already. Many of our customers use it, and it’s a fully tested and proven solution. We also work seamlessly with tracking from DoubleClick, Adobe, Sizmek, AppsFlyer, Kochava, Google, and Facebook. We also offer Marin TruePath, a cross-channel measurement solution that incorporates cross-device data while de-duping across publishers. To learn more about TruePath, contact us today.

Google Parallel Tracking (GPT)

The Change:

Today, clicking an ad results in at least two network round trips: the first to the publisher (let’s say Google or Facebook) to record the click, and the next to the landing page for the result. Redirect tracking such as doubleclick.net or xg4ken.com will incur additional round trips, slowing page loads even further. Google created a process called Google Parallel Tracking (GPT) to get visitors to landing pages more quickly once they click an ad. This may seem like a small improvement, but advertisers should be aware that a one-second delay in mobile page load can decrease conversions by up to 20 percent.

How does GPT work? It uses sendBeacon, a browser method for asynchronous payloads, to send click information to data collectors in parallel with loading the landing page. In practical terms, GPT sends users directly to your landing page after they click a search ad, rather than through a redirect. The browser processes URL tracking requests in the background, speeding up page load times and reducing mobile post-click abandonment. Check out Google’s full GPT announcement on Inside Adwords.

The Impact:

Because they are “sort-of” 1st party (the browser visits that domain) and “sort-of” 3rd party (it only visits for a few milliseconds and the user did not intentionally go to that domain), redirects have been a loophole for setting cookies as long as browsers have blocked 3rd party cookies. Like ITP, sendBeacon treats its payload once and for all based on the browser page, not the payload page. This means that cross-domain tracking and targeting is more limited for browsers that restrict third-party cookie-setting. This is a default setting with Safari but it’s also applicable to other browsers.

In combination with Apple’s ITP changes, relying on redirects for tracking has become increasingly difficult and detrimental to ad performance. Put simply, ad tech providers who rely on redirects for their tracking (such as DoubleClick Campaign Manager, for example), are using estimation rather than concrete data.

What You Can Do:

Parallel Tracking will be applied selectively at first and become standard (non-optional) over the first half of 2018. Safari owns about half of all mobile traffic in the U.S. and an even higher percentage among more affluent customers. DoubleClick is hampered by offering advertisers an “estimated” approach which says that it’ll project which Safari visitors actually converted. As an advertiser running sophisticated digital campaigns to reach customers, do you really want to guess at your conversions from iPhones, iPads, and Macs?

Here are steps you can take to mitigate the impact of GPT:

• Find a solution like Marin that offers a first-party approach.
• Ensure you can measure upstream Facebook views.
• Combine with publisher tracking to better measure multi-device journeys.

Chrome Native Ad Blocking

The Change:

Beginning on February 15th of this year, Google’s Chrome browser began blocking all ads on any website that don’t meet the standards defined by The Coalition for Better Ads. With a stated goal of making online ads better for everyone, the coalition has identified four desktop and eight mobile experiences that fall below their standards.

The Impact:

The goal is to encourage advertisers to present non-intrusive ads, thus creating a better experience for the end user and encouraging fewer ad blocker installations. These new ad standards are likely to promote a “flight to quality” where publishers will look to Google and Facebook to ensure that users have an appropriate ad experience.

What You Can Do:

As an advertiser, you can allocate more budget towards social media ad formats, like in-stream video or Instagram Stories. These ad types are designed to reach users in a meaningful way and are less likely to run afoul of the new ad standards. In addition, you can enjoy the clear benefit of driving higher user engagement for your campaigns.

The Key to a Unified Experience

All three of these changes are being made ostensibly with the goal to create a better experience for users. If successful, visitors will gain increased privacy, faster load times, and better ad experiences—all positive developments from the user’s perspective. However, these improvements will come at the expense of programmatic players in a fragmented ad tech industry.

As the industry struggles to adapt to these changes, Google and Facebook are well positioned to continue capturing additional share of digital ad spend. At the same time, these publishers offer powerful targeting capabilities that can drive performance for advertisers. That’s why it’s imperative that advertisers have a strategy and toolset that enables you to work across these channels. Your customers are moving between Google and Facebook, so make sure you have a team and marketing stack that gives you full visibility into the cross-channel customer journey.

Our team at Marin understands these changes and can talk with you about your particular cross-domain, sub-domain, or retargeting requirements. Contact us today if you’d like to talk about these tracking issues further.