Cookie Apocalypse Countdown: ITP 2.2 Changes

What is Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention 2.2 (ITP) change?

With ITP, Apple has been rolling out a new way for handling Cookie tracking in Safari, which makes up ~17% of web traffic (and 49% for US Mobile Web traffic). ITP greatly restricts cookie-based tracking - forcing advertisers to adjust their promotion methods away from cookie tracking.  It's important to update your tracking setup, if needed, Firefox has rolled out the cookie-blocking solution (see here), and it's been rumored Google is moving in the same direction.

With ITP 2.2, Apple has greatly increased their restrictions around first party cookies tracking. If you're doing traditional cookie tracking, this will have a direct impact on your attribution, but fortunately we have two workarounds for this listed below:  

What does this mean for me?

Great question! Depends on your current setup:

If you’re currently using an S2S setup (IE using Postbacks): There will be no impact for you, since S2S doesn't rely on cookies for tracking.

If you’re using a cookie-based system

Cookie-based tracking links and conversion pixels are the standard setup for traditional desktop affiliate programs.  If you, or your advertisers have this setup, here is what you should know:

The most effective solution is to have your advertisers switch from Cookie to S2S tracking.  

The exact process for an advertiser to switch from Cookie to S2S tracking is dependent on their backend platform setup. We recommend starting a conversation with your Advertisers about ITP 2.2, the expected drop in performance, and why they should transition to a S2S tracking format. S2S is more robust and reliable as a tracking solution, therefore you should see higher tracked conversions after your advertisers move to S2S tracking.

Everflow JS SDK Setup for Direct Linking

This is the best solution if you're working with Advertisers that are unable to handle Postbacks.  

Everflow provides a solution for Direct Linking, which bypasses the traditional click into Cookie-based tracking. You instead will need to place our special JS Tag on each of your Landing Pages, and then the conversion JavaScript on your confirmation page. For full instructions see the full guide here - [Everflow JS SDK Setup Guide]