With the release of iOS 17 on or about September 12, 2023, iOS will begin to remove certain “tracking parameters” from URLs in its Mail and Messages apps, as well as removing them in Safari Private Browsing mode.

There shouldn’t be much impact, but here’s what you need to know …


1. As mentioned initially, this only affects URLs in the iOS Mail and Messages apps, and Safari Private Browsing mode – so overall a very small percentage of URLs and clicks will be affected.


2. iOS 17 does NOT remove UTM parameters – just tracking parameters that uniquely identify a specific user. Primarily, this includes the Google, Facebook and Microsoft Ads Click IDs e.g. the gclid, fbclid and msclid parameters.


3. ClickMagick does not rely on any of the affected Click IDs for tracking, so your tracking is unaffected.


4. ClickMagick does normally send these Click IDs back to your ad networks via Audience Optimization, but for any affected clicks we can’t include them with your conversion data since they are removed by iOS.


5. All ad networks except Microsoft allow the sending of conversions without a Click ID. So unfortunately, for the time being, this does mean that any conversions generated by an affected click will not be sent back to Microsoft Ads. We assume Microsoft Ads will address this limitation in the near future, but that remains to be seen.


6. For all other ad networks, in order to properly and efficiently send conversions from affected clicks back to your ad networks, you must have ClickMagick’s Auto Cost feature enabled. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be using Auto Cost, and you almost certainly already are, and if so there’s nothing to do. If you’re not, you’ll simply want to turn it on.

If Auto Cost is not enabled, as a last resort ClickMagick will attempt to send conversions generated by affected clicks back to all ad networks you have integrated with ClickMagick. If you’re only advertising on a single ad network this will also work just fine, but if you’ve integrated multiple ad networks this may not be the behavior you want.


In short, you should see little to no impact from this iOS update. If you have any questions just let us know.

Article 898 Last updated: 09/07/2023 4:22:18 AM
https://www.clickmagick.com/kb/?article=898