Browser Privacy Impact Services

Browser changes are here.
Be prepared to thrive.

Here’s what is happening

In early 2019, Safari rolled out an upgraded version of its Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP). Now, in Fall 2020, Apple released its yearly upgrades for iOS and iPadOS and released Safari 14.

This means that ITP now affects all browsers in Apple’s mobile Ecosystem, which makes tracking those visitors increasingly difficult. When you can’t identify visitors, you can’t optimize marketing spend, utilize personalization, or get representative A/B testing insights.

Additionally, Safari 14—via its new Privacy Reporting feature—now makes publicly visible what trackers are on the webpages. Historically, companies have erred on the side of tracking everything, but this change means that sites will need a much more strategic plan for what to track, in order to best serve customers and to keep concerned customers from opting out.

And more browser changes are forthcoming.

What’s the impact?

Traditionally, cookies—small text files that a web browser sets on a user’s computer—have persisted for years and have allowed sites to remember that they have seen a particular browser/device combination before.

Using cookies as a proxy for unique users, technology has been developed to facilitate concepts such as campaign tracking, return on media spend, personalized ad targeting, and remarketing.

Safari’s changes dramatically lower the lifespan of these files—in some cases, reducing storage time from two years to as little as 24 hours—when they are set in ways that are common to advertising technology. Lacking identifiers, any existing user could be classified as ‘new’ upon a return visit, and any previous history might be lost.

Audience segmentation becomes inaccurate

Customer journey mapping is limited

Ad spend changes due to broken attribution models

Content and campign performance data is unreliable

Personalization becomes difficult

Technical functionality can break or stop working

Data may cease being collected entirely

Loss of effectiveness in marketing tactics, such as remarketing

Losing tags and cookies doesn’t just affect your data, it impacts your entire business. Search Discovery can make your cookies last longer, improve your marketing investments, and help you deliver better customer experiences.

UNDERSTANDING THE URGENCY

2020

Edge shifts to Chromium and adds anti-tracking tech, hindering attribution and remarketing efforts.

Safari updated Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), blocking third party cookies and capping client storage to seven days, affecting attribution, analytics, and optimization.

Firefox updated Enhanced Tracking Prevention (ETP), known trackers will have their cookies deleted daily in most cases, affecting identification and attribution.

Chrome began rolling out the SameSite cookie changes post-pandemic. Sites that did not prepare will have cross-domain cookies break, affecting remarketing, attribution, single sign-on, and related features.

SEPT 16, 2020

Apple releases iOS14, iPadOS14 and Safari 14. All Browsers on Apple’s mobile systems gain ITP affecting analytics, optimization, attribution and remarketing.

2021

EXPECTED

Chrome will phase out third party cookies in 2022, affecting single sign-on, third party attribution, remarketing, and related features.

How we can help

We can help you identify the impact and provide solutions that help you stay ahead of browser updates.

IDENTIFY IMPACT

Sites are like snowflakes: no company, no site, no tracking is the same. In order to properly ensure your data is tracking/meeting business goals we need to assess the impact the browser updates have both from a strategic and technical level. From there, we can design a service that works for the site.

FREE AUDITS

Here’s how they work:

You provide us with a URL that you want scanned for browser change impacts on tracking.
We provide you with a report detailing technical challenges by browser and identification of affected cookies/external domains.
We will also provide high level suggestions for next steps.

VENDOR SOLUTIONS

It’s our business to remain adaptable to the ever-changing browsing landscape, so you don’t have to stress about it. We work within a company’s existing tag infrastructure to identify problem areas for analysis, optimization, and advertising, and we work with you to mitigate or solve found issues. We execute efficiently and effectively to help you implement existing platform solutions, including:

Google Server Side: Current available solution in Beta for GTM customers to shift data server side.
Tealium EventStream: Current available solution which can allow many tags blocked by browsers to fire server side.
Adobe: Currently does not have a solution in place but expected to roll out by end of year.

STAY UP TO DATE

Browser Blogs /
Developer Notes

Covering current, planned, and future changes.

WebKit

Mozilla

Microsoft Edge Development

Chromium

Browser Change Aggregation Page

Aggregate news about the impact of browser changes on analytics.

Cookie Status

Personal Blogs

Covering privacy, Google products, legal ramifications, and impact to analytics.

Cory Underwood

Simo Ahava

Search Discovery Blog

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