“Link Tracking Protection in Messages, Mail, and Safari Private Browsing Some websites add extra information to their URLs in order to track users across other websites. Now this information will be removed from the links users share in Messages and Mail, and the links will still work as expected. This information will also be removed from links in Safari Private Browsing.” – Apple press release, June 2023
Apple is staking out its territory in the war on 3rd-party tracking with iOS 17. Building upon its reputation for protecting user privacy, and also conveniently taking a big bite out of Meta and Google’s massive ad targeting operations, iOS 17 will prevent platforms tracking user behaviours beyond the content in the first click.
What does this mean for marketers?If you are still heavily dependent on third-party data to run your marketing, then this, along with the imminent demise of 3rd-party cookies in Google, should be your wake-up call that things need to change. Litmus has helpfully pulled together a list of tracking parameters that will be affected by iOS 17:
Source:
|
Parameter |
Description |
|
__hsfp |
HubSpot tracking parameter |
|
__hssc |
HubSpot tracking parameter |
|
__hstc |
HubSpot tracking parameter |
|
__s |
Drip.com email address tracking parameter |
|
_hsenc |
HubSpot tracking parameter |
|
_openstat |
Yandex tracking parameter |
|
dclid |
DoubleClick Click ID (Google) |
|
fbclid |
Facebook click identifier |
|
gclid |
Google click identifier |
|
hsCtaTracking |
HubSpot tracking parameter |
|
igshid |
Instagram tracking parameter |
|
mc_eid |
Mailchimp Email ID (email recipient’s address) |
|
mkt_tok |
Adobe Marketo tracking parameter |
|
ml_subscriber |
MailerLite email tracking |
|
ml_subscriber_hash |
MailerLite email tracking |
|
msclkid |
Microsoft Click ID |
|
oly_anon_id |
Omeda marketing ‘anonymous’ customer id |
|
oly_enc_id |
Omeda marketing ‘known’ customer id |
|
_openstat |
OpenStat tracking parameter |
|
rb_clickid |
Unknown high-entropy tracking parameter |
|
s_cid |
Adobe Site Catalyst tracking parameter |
|
twclid |
Twitter Click Id |
|
vero_conv |
Vero tracking parameter |
|
vero_id |
Vero tracking parameter |
|
wickedid |
Wicked Reports e-commerce tracking |
|
yclid |
Yandex Click ID |
https://www.litmus.com/blog/new-apple-ios-17
We’ve extensively tested the tracking that Spotler users depend on, and they are all unaffected because they are solely first-party tracking, not thirdUTM’s will also still work in iOS 17. This is because they only track the first move that a person makes from an external source to your website.The other thing you can do is investigate how many of your email contacts are actually using iOS in the first place. Here are representative samples of Spotler customers and leads (please note that your results will depend mostly on the industry you are in).
As you can see, iOS users make up a very small percentage of both our audience groups, so iOS17 isn’t going to have a large impact on us. Of course we will keep an eye on the overall trend, as well as looking more deeply at particular audience segments for any variations.
Your iOS 17 To-Do List 1. Stay calm! 2. Understand how much you currently rely on third-party
data
3. Replace as much of this as possible with first-party data
4. Check iOS usage in your current audience