“Starting this month, Google is making changes to the way it captures and reports on conversions in AdWords in response to Apple’s coming Safari update,” Ginny Marvin reports for Search Engine Land. “In June, Apple introduced Intelligent Tracking Prevention, an initiative aimed at limiting third-party trackers from capturing cross-site browsing data, in the next version of Safari, coming out this fall. The move has implications for ad performance tracking for Google and others. On Thursday, Google sent an email to AdWords advertisers outlining changes it is making in response to Intelligent Tracking Prevention.”
“In short, with ITP, third-party cookies that are determined to be able to track users across sites can only be used for 24 hours from the time a user visits a website via Safari. After 24 hours, the third-party cookies can only be used for log-in purposes. The cookies are purged entirely after 30 days,” Marvin reports. “This means that unless a user converts within 24 hours of last visiting an advertiser’s site after clicking an AdWords ad, for example, the conversion attribution will be lost. With Safari accounting for nearly 50 percent of mobile web traffic share in North America, ITP has the potential to wreak havoc on mobile ad conversion attribution.”
“Google is addressing ITP with a method in keeping with Apple’s guidance around ad attribution, which states, ‘We recommend server-side storage for attribution of ad impressions on your website. Link decoration [ e.g., padding links with information] can be used to pass on attribution information in navigations,'” Marvin reports. “Namely, Google has developed a new Google Analytics cookie that will be used to capture campaign and conversion data from Safari in a way that conforms with ITP… Advertisers that have linked their AdWords and Google Analytics campaigns will see no change because the new cookie acts as a first-party cookie and can continue recording conversion data from Safari traffic.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We expected as much.
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