With Google's Tracking Protection 
initiative which aims to restrict certain cookies in its Chrome browser, and Apple's ITP privacy feature doing the same in Safari, you might be wondering how these developments affect impact.com's tracking services. We're here to address your concerns by explaining how these initiatives impact our tracking services and what you can do to prepare for future changes in the world of tracking restrictions.
With online data privacy concerns becoming more prevalent, web browser providers are clamping down on cookies to prevent companies from tracking users as they browse the internet. Google Chrome is just one such browser that has introduced the deprecation of 3rd-party cookies. Many affiliate tracking providers traditionally used 3rd-party cookies to track attribution and ensure that partners were paid out for conversions driven. Tracking providers have since come up with new solutions to allow brands to continue tracking affiliate-driven actions.
Internet cookies are files that collect data about a user's online behavior. 1st-party cookies enhance a user's experience on a single site and cannot share data beyond that site. An example in action is when your session is securely saved to a site so that you don't need to input credentials each time you visit the site. The cookie data is stored within the website domain, e.g., acme.com, and cannot be accessed outside of that domain.
3rd-party cookies, on the other hand, save data about a customer's activity across sites and share this data with an external entity. An example is when a tracking provider would traditionally track a customer's journey from a partner site to the brand sales page. With Chrome and Safari's restrictions on 3rd-party cookies, tracking providers no longer rely on 3rd-party cookie tracking to trace affiliate attribution.
Fortunately, impact.com no longer relies on 3rd-party cookie tracking with its Universal Tracking Tag (UTT), meaning that Google's latest iteration of Tracking Protection should not affect you.
Google's initiative does however have relevance to us at impact.com, as it illustrates the growing trend of web browsers posing restrictions on online tracking methods, and consequently, the methods available to affiliate tracking providers. To stay far ahead of the trend, impact.com recommends that you use our server-to-server tracking services instead of UTT tracking (for more information on why to move away from UTT tracking, see the Intelligent Tracking Prevention Explained partner-facing doc).
Yes, it's possible to test if the absence of 3rd-party cookies hinders you from tracking an action. You can do this by enabling a Chrome flag and running a test action on impact.com:
This step protects the privacy of your personal or business profile.
Open Chrome.
In the upper-right corner of your browser, select your
[Profile] → Add.Select Continue without an account.
Enter a name for your new profile and select Done.
Optionally, select a profile photo and color scheme to help you easily distinguish between your Chrome profiles.
This step allows you to test Chrome's experimental feature of 3rd-party cookie phaseout.
Ensure that you're in your new Chrome profile, then type the following in the address bar:
chrome://flags/In the search bar at the top of the screen, type the following:
Test Third Party Cookie PhaseoutNext to the search result, select Disabled
[Drop-down menu] → Enabled.A banner will appear at the bottom of the screen prompting you to relaunch Chrome.
Select Relaunch.
This step allows you to test your impact.com tracking integration with the 3rd-party cookie phaseout flag enabled.
Reopen your new Chrome profile and sign in to your impact.com brand account.
Select
Engage → Transactions → Test Actions.On the Test Actions screen, select Start New Test.
In the Run Test field:
Select Start test in new window.
Complete an action in the test window.
In the Validate Actions field:
Select View my test action.
If you see an action, it means that your integration supports tracking with 3rd-party cookies disabled.
The action should be visible within 30 minutes of running the test. To verify that all the data is correct, select
[More] → View details.To change the test action's status from Pending Validation to Successful / Failed, select Approve / Reject.
