ITP, Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention, is a feature within Safari that prevents a website from tracking their visitors around the web. Cookies can now be deleted in as little as one day, making it impossible to track the user journey of someone who uses Safari as their browser.
ITP is particularly troublesome for websites which have a longer conversion window as they will be tracked as a new user, meaning conversions are attributed to lower-funnel channels as previous activity is discounted.
The differing versions correspond with different Safari browsers:
*Non-cookie-based web storage that record information about a person visiting the site.
ITP means that marketers are no longer able to effectively attribute the customer journey for Safari users. While the number of Safari users is much smaller than those using Chrome, this can still have a significant impact on your data and you should avoid taking related metrics at face value as it can mean your digital strategy is misinformed.
We have created a Data Studio dashboard which can be connected to your own Google Analytics to identify what proportion of your website visitors are impacted by ITP, allowing you to understand where the data may be skewed.
While it is no longer possible to track the customer journey of those using Safari, this dashboard allows you to understand where the metrics may be wrong, including:
Learn more about ITP here or get in touch to discuss solutions.