During the summer, we delivered an extensive blog post on ITP2 and how it would affect data for our clients. Safari 12 shipped on 17 September; we thought we’d post again on this topic and how we are helping our clients address it.
To summarize in 25 words: ITP2 affects the partner and affiliate marketing industries because it deprecates third-party cookies that are traditionally used to track and attribute conversions to publishers.
Many Partnerize clients have moved to one or the other of two solutions we offer to mitigate the effects of ITP2. Here’s a capsule summary of these two offerings:
1) Server-to-Server Integration (S2S)
With a server-to-server integration, there is no reliance on a third party cookies or on implementing a conversion pixel image onto a client’s confirmation pages. With S2S, a direct connection is created between the client’s server and Partnerize, and all transactional information is transferred along with a unique Click ID (in Partnerize parlance, Clickref). This encapsulates all details about the click and to whom the conversion should be attributed. As the Clickref is passed directly between the companies, S2S is totally unaffected by the deprecation of third party cookies in ITP2 or any other browser policy.
We recommend S2S integrations because they offer a more robust and secure data transfer mechanism. If you would like more information please refer to this article.
2) Click-ID-Based-Pixel-Tracking
Some clients are unable to implement S2S integrations at this time. For those clients, we offer a pixel based, first-party cookie tracking solution that mitigates conversion data losses from ITP2.
With this form of tracking, Partnerize passes a Click ID (Clickref) to the client, which stores this value in a first-party cookie. FIRST-party cookies are not deprecated by ITP2, so the conversion can be credited back using this cookie. The unique Clickref allows Partnerize to identify all information regarding the click such as partner, placement, and other details used solely for the attribution of conversions.
When the conversion occurs, the client simply returns the Click ID back to Partnerize within the conversion pixel along with its transactional information. From this, Partnerize can allocate the conversion back to the originating partner. Thus, even when the third-party cookie is deprecated in Safari, the client still has the ability to track via a pixel implementation.
While the use of tag managers is not essential for this form of tracking, they often make implementation more straight-forward. Fortunately, most enterprise-sized clients, which are the focus of our business, already use a tag manager.
For Our Clients: Our team is aggressively reaching out to every client to speak with them about ITP2 and our approaches to addressing the challenge so that they get credit for every conversion. If you have not yet connected with your CS lead regarding these solutions, email them now and they will explain your options.