Pincer movement incoming

The world of digital marketing and the ability to effectively reach audiences is about to get a whole lot harder.

Privacy concerns have already reared their head with consumers and regulators, and now the tech giants are standing up and making change to protect their users’ identity.

Apple’s recently announced Link Tracking Protection (LTP), a feature of its newly released iOS17, has just gone live, dramatically affecting how marketers and ecommerce brands access customer information.

Basically, the change is a more sophisticated adaptation of Apple’s privacy policy – and given Apple’s market share in messaging and email, and Safari’s position as the second most popular browser globally, it’s a big deal.

Traditionally, tracking parameters, located at the end of a URL typically after a question mark, send essential information to a brand’s analytics tracking systems and website. Advertising platforms generally use these parameters to connect ad clicks to corresponding actions on a website, specifically visits and sales. It’s a way of gathering information about user actions, while also tracking how campaigns are performing. Apple’s LTP adds an additional layer of user privacy, and will essentially block user tracking, preventing websites from tracking user data from private browsing in Safari and when links are opened in Apple Mail and messages.

Couple this with what Apple is doing with the Attorney General’s Department’s proposed changes to the Privacy Act and warnings from ADMA that Australia’s laws might be tougher than the European GDPR Act, there’s big changes afoot. Most important is that government has put forward the idea that a person can be reasonably identified even when they’re not – which may add a new level of complexity for marketers.

The impact from Apple’s LTP is wide-ranging and could affect everything from decreased attribution, impacted personalisation and segmentation, limited retargeting abilities, impacted tracking and challenges with analytics and reporting to promotions. If brands are looking to build audience based on users that click on an ad, for example, audience are likely to drop and people take up iOS 17 and its privacy features and it will already be loaded on new iPhones,

Apple’s new LTP is likely to limit a brand’s ability to deliver a personalised experience for their customers, impacting their ability to tailor content, based on a user’s past interactions like email or ad clicks. It will significantly impact how marketers both connect with their customers via promotional messages, email marketing and browsers, and how they use online browsing data and insights to target potential shoppers.

Front-run or bust?

The latest changes represent the constant, industry-wide struggle for brands: just when they get their head around the latest upgrade or platform, tech providers release new solutions, yet again impacting how marketers connect and target their audiences. It’s a constant and evolving industry narrative – and this time, it comes on the brink of the annual Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales when online retail spending is at its peak.

It an already challenged consumer spending environment, targeting has never been more important. So, how can brands get ahead of the change?

Preparation and swift action are key. While immediate adoption of the new technology is expected to be slow, it is likely that by the end of March next year, about 90 per cent of users will have shifted to the new ecosystem. This means brands have a limited window to adjust their marketing and attribution strategies. They will need to rethink and potentially overhaul their online targeting and communication models to adjust to this new, privacy-centric environment.

Firstly, brands will need to leverage contextual data and lean on old-school strategies. Sure, there may be new challenges with individualised tracking, but brands can still collect contextual data including the time emails were sent, the subject line, and content to assess the effectiveness of their campaigns and look at opportunities to improve.

Similarly, amplifying direct engagement with customers will become more critical than ever before. Brands will need to regularly connect with their customers and call on them for feedback, using everything from surveys to gather thoughts, prompting replies to emails, and encouraging users to take actions that are trackable on websites.

These tactics might sound basic, but they are fundamental, particularly in a landscape where individualised tracking is limited. For many brands, the switch to return to more traditional marketing strategies may be a chance to innovate, pivot and create new channels and campaigns, ahead of other major privacy changes.

Some channels may also incorporate advertising unique click IDs in other forms of link decoration, but we anticipate these loopholes will be patched in future versions like we saw originally in iOS14. Alternatively, we could see channels opt to rename their click IDs to bypass Apple’s LTP, but this is unlikely.

Ultimately, there is a larger share of responsibility on ad tech and analytics platforms to protect their tracking abilities. Apple is endorsing a new browser-based tracking method known as “private click measurement” but adoption is not widespread and is still in its infancy. The good news is that these models provide some level of attribution – without compromising user privacy.

Currently, there’s no perfect fix. Nor is the full impact of Apple’s LTP on click tracking completely known. What we do know is that advertisers will need to get on top of the technology and its future impacts – and fast – to maintain a competitive.

We anticipate zero-party data-led marketing tools like email and SMS providers to be impacted first, then gradually other media networks, as iOS 17 adoption expands. Now is the time for brands to start pivoting their operations to get ahead of the change.