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Apple is aggressively pursuing end-user privacy improvements and marketing them as positive enhancements to their users; at Apple’s 2021 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC21) the company has announced several new privacy enhancements to the default applications and services within MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, and WatchOS. As with recent proposed changes to iOS14 and the App Store marketplace, the new enhancements are designed to provide transparency to end users about the ways in which they are tracked online and provide options to opt-out of tracking altogether. This will primarily take the form of increased notification popups prompting users to allow or deny permission to allow reporting of behaviors and activities from within applications, emails, and websites.

“[The changes] will arrive as part of the fall software update to iOS 15, iPadOS 15, MacOS Monterey and iCloud.com.” At the moment these OS updates appear to be scheduled for release in September of 2021.

As with the recent announcements by various providers to move to a cookie-less web in the near future, the changes Apple is introducing into its ecosystem are a clear indication that brands will need to take a thorough look at their marketing data collection procedures and usage of 3rd party services and trackers. Investments into 1st party data collection, server side analytics, and native in-app tracking events will help mitigate current and future marketing changes due to a rapidly evolving focus on user data privacy. 

App Tracking Transparency (ATT)

Starting with iOS 14.5 app developers must disclose tracking to the end-user and “ask users for their permission to track them across apps and websites owned by other companies” (see User Privacy and Data Use - App Store). This change led to a precipitous drop-off in opt-ins with nearly ~80% of the iOS 14.5+ user base choosing to decline participation in 3rd party tracking within apps. This is compounded by the iOS 14.5 adoption rate with 90% of devices released in the last 4 years running on iOS 14 and 85% of all iOS devices running iOS 14

iOS 15 will now also include the ability to run a privacy report to review “how often each app has used the permission they’ve previously granted to access their location, photos, camera, microphone, and contacts during the past seven days” and make changes as they see fit. Given the iOS 14 adoption metrics it can be presumed that the majority of iOS devices will update to iOS 15.

Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP)

Intelligent Tracking Prevention has been included in Safari web browser versions going back to 2017 and was originally built to protect unsuspecting end-users from agents that were surreptitiously collecting data and inputs from browser sessions. The agents targeted were primarily spyware, malware, or other scripts built for nefarious uses such as identity theft. Overtime, ITP has evolved to also provide tracking protections from a much broader set of legitimate 3rd party tracking cookies and pixels. Similar to ATT, the intention of ITP is to provide web users with transparency into how, when, and who is tracking their browsing activities. ITP has the potential to prevent 3rd party tracking cookies and even analytics events (such as Google Analytics) from properly reporting activities or attributing activities to a unique user id. Although Safari does not make up a large market share of browser sessions, this may skew web analytics and events negatively.

Safari 15 will be included in the rollout of iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and MacOS Monterey with some minor updates to ITP 2.3 such as blocking agents from recording a user’s IP address. The lack of IP availability makes it much more difficult to stitch together user profiles from other data sources and will have an impact on marketing activities such as retargeting. 

Apple is now also including ITP in other default applications with the biggest impact being the inclusion of ITP into Apple Mail. This inclusion in Apple Mail is significant to both MacOS and iOS devices as it will potentially prevent tracking pixels contained within HTML emails from loading, severely impacting email open and click metrics. This is especially concerning as the Apple Mail app in iOS currently makes up 38.9% of total email client market share. Desktop Apple Mail makes up 11.5% of market share for a total impact of potentially 50% of all users sent marketing emails not reporting basic email metric information.

Link decoration has been a common work around to some of the challenges that ITP has presented wherein data is included in the URL query string of links that can be detected and read on the target server. Another approach is to pass links through a proxy service that tracks clicks and attribution before redirecting to the intended destination. This allows 3rd party services to exchange information about a user to each other without cookies or database connections. Common examples of link decoration include Google UTM parameters for GA attribution or Facebook Client IDs for FB conversion pixels. Link decoration detection and suppression have been part of ITP since version 2.2 and its inclusion in Apple Mail makes tracking pixel workarounds within emails incredibly difficult and not worthwhile. 

In addition as a result of these changes to cookie policy in ITP, all Safari client cookies not set explicitly with a “Set Cookie” http header will expire in one day. On subsequent visits outside the initial 1-day timeframe, the user would be tracked as a new visitor. These non-explicit cookies are typically assigned from Javascript snippets using the “document.cookie” method. The forced expiration of cookie trackers especially affects tracking of anonymous visitors who have not been identified to the app/web-site via a 1st party login mechanism. The forced expiration of cookies in this manner makes it harder to track full user journeys as there are no easy solutions to link customer touch-points. 

iCloud Plus: Hide My Email & Private Relay

Apple has also updated iCloud with a new iCloud Plus subscription option that includes two new privacy features: Hide My Email and Private Relay.

Hide My Email allows the user to generate a one-off alias email address for use in marketing forms as a means to protect the user’s true email address; Apple will allow the user no limit to the number of aliases in use. Since the user will potentially sign up with multiple email aliases across different services it removes a key piece of personal information used in data stitching across various data sources.

Private Relay is effectively an Apple provided VPN service that uses a double blind strategy to ensure that the user’s web activities are hidden from their ISP and Apple. With Private Relay in effect there will be no ability for IP tracking to occur in any browser or application while the user is connected.

Since iCloud Plus is a paid subscription service it is unclear as to what the adoption rate may be across Apple devices but it can be estimated based on reported subscriptions across other Apple services to be in the 100M+ market share.

In Summary

  • Transparency and notification to end-users of 3rd party tracking has become a de-facto standard within Apple ecosystem
  • User who are provided notification and opt-in/opt-out decision buttons select to opt-out the majority of the time as has been shown with iOS ATT notifications
  • Primary keys such as email address and IP address are increasingly being obfuscated on Apple devices making user data augmentation and stitching of customer profiles increasingly difficult
  • ITP is targeting workaround mechanisms such as link decoration, proxy servers, unique user ID (UUID) assignments, and social media buttons to prevent unintentional data sharing from end-users which is making conversion and attribution tracking increasingly difficult from Apple devices and browsers
  • Inclusion of ITP into Apple mail clients may severely impact basic email metric reporting and any downstream campaign logic or optimizations built on basic email KPIs (e.g. open email triggers next campaign step)
  • Continued evolution of privacy evaluations and criteria in ITP may impact conversion tracking, attribution, and basic web metric reporting from Safari based browsers 
  • Any easy technical workarounds to ITP are likely to be suppressed in future ITP updates as has been shown in ITP development history so far
  • Owned technologies and platform solutions are very resource intensive but provide brands a more future-proof solution in an evolving privacy landscape

Conclusion

With all of the proposed privacy changes to the Apple ecosystem as well as changes in the broader Internet software market it is becoming increasingly key for brands to own and architect their own data collection mechanisms as a means to ensure meaningful marketing signals are still accessible. Efforts should be made across several workstreams:

  • Increase 1st party data collection through owned channels so that key identifiers such as email, name, contact information are collected
    • Drive collection via compelling content
      • Exclusive promos
      • Exclusive content
      • Uniqure offers or forms of loyalty programs
      • Rotating editorial content
      • Exemplary service such as concierge services
      • Foster 2-way conversations
    • Store data in owned data warehouses or data lakes
  • Increase conversion of anonymous users to registered users to enable deeper behavioral tracking and prevent ITP and VPN blockage of key metrics by utilizing identifiable 1st party app sessions (cookies)
  • Reduce reliance on 3rd party vendors and service providers including
    • Data brokers (list buys)
    • SaaS analytics
    • Data insights augmented with non 1st party data
    • Channel attribution from 3rd party mechanisms such as query string links (see below)
    • Social media login mechanisms that don’t generate a local session
  • Where possible implement owned server side analytics to track key events and ensure continued capture of behaviors that enable marketing segmentation
    • Key app events (both web and mobile)
    • Key page/screen views
    • Registrations and logins
  • Evaluate experiments, optimizations or smart campaign flows that rely on open and click email metrics for potential impact
    • Drip campaigns are of particular concern
  • Evaluate usage of attribution or other data sharing through URL query string parameters or proxy domains (such as link shortening services)
    • These are potentially impacted by ITP

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This post is part of our ongoing blog series highlighting our CMS practice at AMPXD; learn more about how we select CMS solutions through our other stories. As a large worldwide enterprise software organization with multiple product teams, marketing teams, customer communities, and outreach programs; VMware knows the daily challenges of managing a robust blog ecosystem and its content.. With over 40 different corporate blogs, VMware tasked our CMS experts at AMPXD with creating and managing a centralized authoring environment. Before our engagement the VMware teams had disparate blog instances in multiple platforms which made both content and user administration difficult to coordinate and manage. The organic growth of the various blog platforms also created the situation where they lacked brand consistency with various blogs’ look-and-feel resembling different brands. This lack of cohesion resulted in end users browsing between properties having jarring experiences as brand assets and user interface elements were unique to each blog. The AMPXD team in coordination with VMware stakeholders audited their internal workflows and business needs and identified WordPress Multisite as the ideal platform to enable blog authoring for the entire organization. The extensibility and control features of creating a WordPress Multisite network allowed for consistent user interfaces via brand controlled themes, a centralized user repository integrated with SSO, and one true dashboard to manage content and sites across the organization. AMPXD completed the migration of the existing VMware corporate blogs to the WordPress platform and, as part of the work, unified all of the disparate user interface elements of the blogs into one true corporate blog theme. The VMware blog network now has consistent styling elements whether you are browsing content from VMware Latin America or reading about the latest tips for utilizing vSphere The flexibility of the WordPress platform and the ability to create multisite blog networks has enabled VMware to create a robust blog ecosystem with over 40 blogs specialized to VMware products and disciplines. Utilizing content syndication mechanisms, VMware now has one blog space that is an aggregate of all corporate content across the blog network, giving customers one portal to discover and consume corporate content from across the whole ecosystem. By centering on the authoring workflow and optimizing the WordPress platform, the VMware team’s ability to easily manage authors, themes, system integrations and plugins has allowed the enterprise to focus on creating rich content and communities. Over the course of our ongoing series of posts around technology, we will share stories of uniquely different CMS solutions in practical implementations. If you have an upcoming CMS project or need to discuss content management strategies, the team at AMPXD would love to assist you with your needs. Reach out to us via our Contact Us form. You can also read about our entire suite of Experience Design and Website Development capabilities on our Services Page.

  • 3 min read
  • September 14, 2023

In our continuing series of examining Google Search Trends to gain insights into the top keywords queried in the USA, we present our findings for July 2023. Every day, we capture the top three keyword phrases in terms of search volume as reported by Google Trends (US Only). Each term has an estimated query volume attached to it, which we also record. The number scale tops out at 10,000,000+ with a lower limit of 200,000+ (sometimes 100,000+). After the conclusion of the month, we look at the phrases we collected along with their volumes to get an understanding of what drove queries for the month. Search Is Sizzling In July Actually, the total search volumes for the phrases we collected in July 2023 were lower compared to June so sizzling may be an exaggeration. We can’t say for certain why the reported search volumes were lower. There could have been a change in the way Google Trends was reporting query volume. The team likes to think that the people are out and about and not looking at their phones as much. Oh sure. Looking across the keywords, we had several celebrity deaths that made up the most searched topics of the month. The 4th of July holiday and the guy who seems undeniably connected to it made our report. We have an understanding at what movies, TV, and music were popular last month along with how much big jackpots of money captivated the search audience. Carlee Russell was someone people wanted to know more about and there was a lot of interest in the sport of soccer. Lastly, changes at Twitter and the launch of Threads had us excited to share more from the category of social media. Here’s what we have for you in this report! We Say Goodbye Sadly, the queries with the most volume from the past month were driven by celebrity deaths: Tony Bennett - 7/21/2023 - 2,000,000+ queries Sinead O'Connor - 7/26/2023 - 5,000,000+ queries On the last day of the month, two other entertainers passed away. Angus Cloud - 7/31/2023 - 5,000,000+ queries Paul Reubens - 7/31/2023 - 2,000,000+ queries We tend not to report on the query related to celebrity deaths but last month, two of these phrases were the only ones to be reported as having over 5 million queries for the day. The Fourth Fireworks, parades, and Joey Chestnut. These are the things that come to mind when we think about the Fourth of July holiday. You may not agree with the last item in the series, but the competitive eater has made our report over the past 3 years! Joey Chestnut - 7/2/2023 - 100,000+ queries Independence Day - 7/3/2023 - 200,000+ queries Fourth of July - 7/3/2023 - 2,000,000+ queries Joey Chestnut - 7/4/2023 - 500,000+ queries Take a look at the rising search popularity of his name in this Google Trends graph! Like it or not, Joey Chestnut is becoming a regular feature for the holiday. Summer Entertainment There were a few movie titles in our list from July 2023: Sound of Freedom - 7/3/2023 - 200,000+ queries Wonka - 7/11/2023 - 100,000+ queries Barbie movie - 7/20/2023 - 2,000,000+ queries The Sound of Freedom was released in theaters on July 4 and the Wonka film trailer dropped on the 11th. What seems to be the movie of the summer if not the year, Barbie hit the big screens on July 21st. Here are the queries that made our list that are related to TV shows. Emmy nominations 2023 - 7/12/2023 - 200,000+ queries The Summer I Turned Pretty - 7/13/2023 - 200,000+ queries Golden Bachelor - 7/17/2023 - 100,000+ queries Lastly, Travis Scott released an album on the 28th and people wanted to know more: Utopia Travis Scott - 7/27/2023 - 200,000+ queries Dreams of Free Money It seems like once or twice a year we get a large lottery jackpot that stirs up search interest. In July, we had two: Powerball - 7/8/2023 - 200,000+ queries Mega Millions - 7/8/2023 - 200,000+ queries Powerball - 7/11/2023 - 500,000+ queries Powerball - 7/15/2023 - 500,000+ queries Powerball numbers - 7/18/2023 - 500,000+ queries Powerball - 7/18/2023 - 1,000,000+ queries Powerball - 7/18/2023 - 2,000,000+ queries As you can see, the Powerball lottery game was very popular in July. Even though Mega Millions saw one entry in July when no one won the $427 million prize, The Powerball jackpot hit 1 billion dollars on the 18th and there was one winner for the drawing on the 20th. The Curious Case of Carlee Russell Carlee Russell’s name was reported on news outlets as someone who was kidnapped. Carlee Russell - 7/14/2023 - 500,000+ queries Carlee Russell found - 7/15/2023 - 1,000,000+ queries Carlee Russell - 7/19/2023 - 1,000,000+ queries The Alabama woman admitted later that she staged her own kidnapping and turned herself in and was charged with making false reports. Some Keywords Related To Politics Here are the phrases that made Google’s Daily Trends top 3 last month. Cocaine found in White House - 7/4/2023 - 100,000+ queries Student loan forgiveness - 7/14/2023 - 200,000+ queries Mitch McConnell - 7/26/2023 - 1,000,000+ queries Besides all the holiday festivities, people wanted to know about the cocaine found at the White House. We guess we’ll never know. On the 14th, the Biden Administration announced it would forgive the loans for 804,000 borrowers and on the 26th, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell had an episode where he stopped talking while being interviewed by reporters and was escorted from the podium where he was speaking. Soccer Keywords We are going to call it soccer in this report, but the sport better known as football around the world drove many people to search last month. The USMNT was involved in the CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament. Here are some queries that were related to it that made our collection. USA vs Trinidad and Tobago - 7/2/2023 - 100,000+ queries Mexico vs Costa Rica - 7/6/2023 - 200,000+ queries USA vs Panama - 7/12/2023 - 200,000+ queries The USWNT played in the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup and search interest in that team and their matches was strong and they also made the list. Women's World Cup - 7/19/2023 - 500,000+ queries USWNT - 7/20/2023 - 100,000+ queries U.S. Women's Soccer - 7/21/2023 - 200,000+ queries USA vs Netherlands - 7/26/2023 - 200,000+ queries Women's World Cup - 7/27/2023 - 200,000+ queries It figures that after a world famous player joins your club that suddenly the team name is getting queried every time you play. Inter Miami - 7/21/2023 - 1,000,000+ queries Inter Miami - 7/25/2023 - 500,000+ queries We’ll keep an eye on how many times this team makes our list for the rest of the year. Major League Baseball There is another major league playing games in the summer. MLB had their All-Star game in July but searchers mostly cared about the Home Run Derby. Home Run Derby 2023 - 7/9/2023 - 200,000+ queries Home Run Derby - 7/10/2023 - 500,000+ queries The trade deadline for the league actually occurred on the first of August but people still wanted to see the flurry of trades. MLB Trade Deadline - 7/31/2023 - 200,000+ queries Sorry Mets fans. Interest In Other Sports Too Queries related to big events in Tennis and Boxing made our list. Carlos Alcaraz - 7/14/2023 - 200,000+ queries Wimbledon - 7/16/2023 - 1,000,000+ queries The Wimbledon tournament was played in July 2023 and Carlos Alcaraz was the Men’s Singles winner. Spence vs Crawford - 7/28/2023 - 200,000+ queries Crawford vs Spence - 7/28/2023 - 200,000+ queries Errol Spence Jr vs Terence Crawford - 7/29/2023 - 200,000+ queries The boxing match between Errol Spence Jr. and Terrence Crawford was fought on the 29th. As you can see, there were many ways to search for this bout. On the 29th, Crawford defeated Spence via TKO. Prime Day Amazon had their big deal day for Prime members as they typically do in July. Amazon Prime Day - 7/10/2023 - 1,000,000+ queries The search volume is almost back to pre-pandemic levels but not quite where it was in July 2019: ‘ Twitter, Threads, and X We finish up this edition of our search trends report with all the big happenings with social media platforms. Here’s a timeline of all the things searchers wanted to know more about with the changes at Twitter (X) and Meta: Rate limit exceeded Twitter - 7/1/2023 - 200,000+ queries Threads - 7/5/2023 - 1,000,000+ queries Twitter rebrand - 7/23/2023 - 200,000+ queries For some reason, there were limits put in place for the number of tweets users could view in a day, with different limits for verified and unverified accounts. Meta launched Threads on the 5th, much to the surprise of social media managers everywhere. We shall see how this new platform evolves as we have been viewing Twitter’s many changes over the course of 2023, which includes its rebrand to X. Update all of your social icons! Thanks for reading. If you liked this article, we utilize search trends data for all of our clients and we invite you to learn more about our SEO services.

When you’re first starting out on social media, you may be heeding advice to “just show up” on each platform. Great advice, nonetheless, but there’s an opportunity to diversify your content and give it a more native fit for each social media platform. Establishing distinct channel strategies ensures that you’re engaging most effectively with that channel’s audience. Consumers use different apps for different reasons.Your audience on Instagram is completely different from your audience on Twitter or TikTok. More importantly, media dimensions, character limits, and the overall strategy and objective vary depending on what social media platform you’re using. Content can be repurposed to ensure it communicates the brands' message across different platforms,however, it should always be tweaked to fit the social channel’s needs and to increase engagement. Let’s take a look at a few popular platforms and how to optimize your content on each one. Instagram Instagram is a staple when a brand is trying to showcase their visual DNA. Most brands only have about 3 seconds to capture consumers’ attention, so they’ll want to get a good understanding of what you’re about from just a photo. No matter the industry, people will be coming to your brand’s Instagram profile to see what the products or services offered look like and take a peek at the aesthetics offered inside as well. Instagram is a visual storytelling app. Feed posts allow you to show the bigger picture, while story posts are where your consumers can see every step along the journey. Through story interactions, reels, and direct messages, there’s also a wide-open opportunity to develop a community surrounding your brand. X (previously Twitter) A community manager’s dream (or nightmare), X (previously Twitter) allows you to speak directly to your audience—and they’re likely to respond! X gives your brand an avenue to speak on what speaks to them, interact with consumers, and easily repost relevant content, all great ways to lean into your brand's personality. Most brands allow the witty, not-so-serious side of themselves to live on X, leaning into gifs, memes, and trends that float across the text-first platform. You could use this platform to engage jokingly with your competitors, start conversations about the products or services you offer and have a little fun. TikTok TikTok is a great platform to push your brand creativity and have your content reach new audiences using unique trends. For your brand, TikTok is a creative playground. With trending sounds, filters, and templates, there are so many ways to present your brand in a way you may never have before. The platform’s motto, "Make TikToks not Ads," is a great guardrail for developing content. Consumers on TikTok learn about hidden gem products, new recipes, or product hacks. Optimal content on this app is very immersive, so you have an opportunity to find more information and insights about your consumers. LinkedIn LinkedIn is a great place to show off some thought leadership and anything interesting you’re doing in your industry. Think of LinkedIn as your brand’s professional landing, a place to network and mingle in a more formal setting. Brands could use this to showcase their values, employee spotlights, and business achievements. This could spark an interest in future customers, employees, or investors. So, before jumping into a new social media platform, (like Threads), develop a channel strategy. If the app is primarily visual, take some time to solidify pictures and videos that will add value to your page and engage your audience, like relevant infographics or shots of real people enjoying your brand. For more text-first apps, take advantage of the opportunity to let your words do the work by starting engaging conversations with your consumers or answering FAQ. Most importantly, get to know your consumers! Understand how your audience behaves and engages on each specific channel so you can tailor your content to fit right in.