If you work in digital marketing, you’ll probably be aware that Apple has been making life increasingly difficult for advertisers over the last few years. What started with restrictions on third-party cookies in Safari has gradually expanded into a much wider effort to prevent companies from tracking people as they browse the internet.
The latest development comes with iOS 17, which introduces new privacy features designed to prevent websites and advertisers from identifying users through tracking information embedded in URLs.
While the update was actually released back in September, the implications for digital marketers are still being discussed, particularly when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.
So is Apple about to make website tracking impossible, or is this another change that sounds considerably more dramatic than it actually is?
What Is Apple Changing?
One of the more interesting features introduced in iOS 17 is something Apple calls ‘Link Tracking Protection’, which forms part of its wider Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection functionality.
Essentially, this allows Safari to automatically remove certain tracking parameters from website addresses when somebody clicks on a link.
You might have noticed that when you click an advertisement or a link in an email, the URL sometimes contains an enormous amount of seemingly meaningless information after the actual page address.
For example, rather than visiting:
www.example.com/products/
You might find yourself visiting something like:
www.example.com/products/?click_id=123456789
That additional information can be used to identify a particular click, allowing advertisers and analytics platforms to associate subsequent activity with the original advertisement.
Apple’s new feature identifies certain parameters that could be used to track individuals across websites and removes them before the destination page is loaded.
Importantly, the link itself should continue working normally. It’s the identifying information that’s being removed, rather than the actual destination.
Does This Affect Every Website Visit?
Fortunately for advertisers, the restrictions aren’t quite as comprehensive as they might initially sound.
By default, Link Tracking Protection operates in Safari’s Private Browsing mode, as well as when handling links through Apple’s Mail and Messages applications.
However, users can also enable the functionality for regular Safari browsing by changing their privacy settings.
This means that somebody browsing normally in Safari won’t necessarily experience the same restrictions as somebody using Private Browsing, although Apple has made the additional protection available to anyone who wants it.
It’s also worth remembering that Safari already includes Intelligent Tracking Prevention, which restricts the ability of third-party cookies and other tracking technologies to follow people between websites.
So while Link Tracking Protection introduces another obstacle for advertisers, it’s really an extension of changes that have been taking place for several years.
Will This Break Google Analytics?
This is probably the question that interests me most.
Google Analytics 4 relies on various methods to collect information about website visitors, including first-party cookies and events generated by the tracking code installed on a website.
Fortunately, the new restrictions don’t simply prevent Google Analytics from operating.
If somebody visits your website using Safari, Google Analytics can still record information about their visit, subject to the usual browser restrictions and consent requirements.
However, problems can arise when analytics platforms rely on identifying parameters in URLs to connect a particular visit or conversion to an earlier interaction.
For example, Google Ads uses identifiers such as the Google Click Identifier, or GCLID, to help associate website activity with advertising clicks.
If identifying information is removed before the website receives it, certain forms of attribution could become less reliable. The actual effect will depend on which parameters are affected, the browser settings being used and how the website’s tracking has been configured.
It’s important not to confuse this with ordinary UTM parameters, such as utm_source and utm_campaign, which are commonly used to identify the source of website traffic. Apple’s approach is primarily concerned with parameters that can identify individual users, rather than simply describing which marketing campaign generated a visit.
In other words, there’s no reason to assume that all your campaign tracking is suddenly going to stop working.
Haven’t We Been Here Before?
This isn’t the first time Apple has introduced privacy changes that have caused concern among digital marketers.
Back in 2021, the introduction of App Tracking Transparency in iOS 14.5 required applications to obtain permission before tracking users across other companies’ applications and websites.
That change caused considerable problems for Meta, particularly because Facebook’s advertising platform relied heavily on tracking users between its applications and external websites.
Apple also introduced Mail Privacy Protection with iOS 15, making it more difficult for email marketing platforms to determine whether somebody has actually opened an email.
As a result, email open rates have become considerably less reliable as a measure of engagement, particularly for audiences using Apple Mail.
The common theme is that Apple is gradually reducing the amount of information advertisers can collect about individual users.
From a privacy perspective, I can understand why people might welcome these changes. However, from a marketing perspective, it makes accurately measuring the performance of campaigns considerably more complicated.
What Can Advertisers Do About It?
Personally, I think the most important thing is to make sure you’re not relying too heavily on any single method of tracking.
If you’re using Google Ads, for example, it’s worth reviewing your conversion tracking configuration and considering features such as Enhanced Conversions, which can help improve attribution using appropriately collected first-party customer information.
Server-side tracking is another option worth investigating, although it’s important to understand that moving tracking away from the browser doesn’t automatically bypass privacy restrictions or remove the need for consent.
I’d also recommend regularly comparing your analytics data against actual business results, whether that’s ecommerce sales, customer enquiries or information recorded in your CRM.
After all, if Google Analytics reports 100 conversions but your business has only received 70 enquiries, there’s clearly something worth investigating.
Is This the End of Website Tracking?
I very much doubt it.
The restrictions introduced in iOS 17 make certain tracking methods less effective, but they certainly don’t prevent businesses from understanding how people interact with their websites.
What they do demonstrate, however, is that the days of being able to track somebody relatively easily across numerous websites and applications are gradually coming to an end.
I suspect we’ll see further restrictions from Apple and other technology companies over the next few years, particularly as public awareness of online privacy continues to increase.
For advertisers, that means adapting the way we measure performance rather than simply expecting the same tracking methods to work indefinitely.
And perhaps that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s a reasonable argument that advertisers have become a little too dependent on tracking absolutely everything people do online.
Although I’d still quite like to know which of my Google Ads campaigns generated that last enquiry.