Anyone working in Digital Marketing will no doubt be aware of the recent Privacy feature development from WebKit, the web browser engine used by Safari, Mail, App Store, and many other apps on macOS, iOS, and Linux which first introduced “Intelligent Tracking Prevention” (ITP) back in June 2017.

Since then we have seen various iterations (1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 and most recently 2.3) shipped with Safari 13.1 and iOS 13.4. The most recent blog post issued by Webkit has now confirmed that:

Cookies for cross-site resources are now blocked by default across the board. This is a significant improvement for privacy since it removes any sense of exceptions or “a little bit of cross-site tracking is allowed”. (John Wilander, WebKit, March 27 2020)

As we posted last year we have been keeping a close eye on how this affects the affiliate marketing Industry as well as everyone operating in it.

In 2017, with ITP1 already announced and GDPR on the horizon, we paused and began to take a long look at the way we track users, and how we should do it. In 2018 we set out a new way of working, and we did it properly. Rather than tweak code, or simply colour our legal position, we positioned ourselves clearly, and resolutely, from day one. (Webgains, 2019)

With the latest update it makes sense for Webgains just to underline & reinforce a couple of things as regards ITP, 3rd Party Tracking, Webgains and all of the merchants and affiliates we are working with.

So what does this latest ITP 3rd Party cookie block update mean for Webgains?

Well, very little, if anything at all. In 2018, new Webgains tracking was created to run 100% and solely on 1st party cookies. Since this was also required for Webgains’ GDPR compliance we worked exceptionally hard to move the majority of our advertisers on to this new codebase. Then a year later we took the important step to first suspend, then close any programmes still running on our legacy tracking. Not only does this mean that ITP 3rd party blocking passes us by but it also means that our advertisers and affiliates are completely insulated from the highly subjective ‘compensation schemes’ or ‘browser adjustments’ as seen elsewhere in the Industry where many advertisers are still running their affiliate marketing campaigns via non ITP compliant 3rd party tracking cookies.

But what should I do as an Advertiser or Affiliate running campaigns via Webgains?

This is pretty simple and straightforward..

• If you are an affiliate working with Webgains: Nothing
• If you are an advertiser selling though Webgains: Nothing
• If you are either of the above, not working with or selling through Webgains and would like a nice easy simple way to manage your Affiliate Marketing campaigns (or have us do it for you) then contact us!

We hope this reassures everyone working with Webgains especially during these highly testing and volatile times.

In summary

As ever, Webgains gives you the Edge when it comes to navigating ITP, GRPR and privacy issues in general; the whole Webgains team around the world is fully committed to providing world class, industry results through our continuous investments in people, technology and relationships. We offer industry leading SLAs on network uptime (>99.99% in 2019 and 100% in Q1 2020), service responses and unbeatable financial results.

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