Optimal web conversion tracking for Safari/iOS devices?
Hi r/googleads ! So I’m in a bit of a rough spot with my ecommerce site. I operate a store that sells Apple product accessories. As a Google Ads manager by trade, my main traffic source has always been Google Ads, but this is somewhat irrelevant, as the same problem likely affects every PPC channel.
As Apple has rolled out more and more strict privacy features, my ability to accurately track conversions has diminished to the point that I am no longer able to turn a profit from PPC ads. To put things into perspective, comparing July 2022 to July 2024, Google Ads sales conversions/total sales rate has dropped from ~83% to ~58%. During this time, the media mix for the site is pretty much exactly the same, so the probability of a Google Ads’ media share % drop by any metric is not an option.
I have serverside tracking set up, but unfortunately the serverside postbacks are only able to track maybe 5% more conversions than my clientside pixel.
Are there any more advanced conversion tracking methodologies that could be used to track iOS/Safari traffic more accurately, or am I doomed to play the PPC game on hard mode until Apple essentially kills my business?
To refrain from “probably broken conversion setup” suggestions – I have the following set up (only one of these as primary of course):
Server side Google Ads enhanced purchase conversion action via Elevar
Clientside Feedarmy’s Google Ads enhanced purchase conversion action via Shopify customer events
Clientside Enhanced purchase conversion action via Shopify checkout script
Imported purchase conversion action from a server-side Elevar GA4 setup
Unless 2 well known and highly regarded tracking solutions’ developers (FeedArmy & Elevar) are rocking up with broken scripts, the likelyhood of this being the issue is close to 0.
The short answer is:
Your problem is a common and severe limitation caused by Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) which aggressively shortens the lifespan of browser-set first-party cookies (like the Google Click ID – gclid) to seven days or less, even with a basic server-side setup.
The solution requires a Server-Side Google Tag Manager (GTM) setup, hosted on a service like Stape or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), configured to utilize your own first-party tracking domain.
This is the key missing piece that extends the cookie lifespan beyond ITP’s limits.
Furthermore, you must aggressively implement Google Ads Enhanced Conversions and leverage the Google Ads API to send hashed, first-party customer data directly to Google’s servers.
This server-to-server data-matching significantly improves attribution accuracy for users who cannot be tracked via cookies, going well beyond simple gclid postbacks.
This combined approach is the most resilient, cost-effective defense against ITP.
The long answer is:
The core reason your current server-side tracking is only marginally better than client-side is that your server-side postbacks likely still rely on a Google Click ID (gclid) that was set by a cookie, and this cookie is still subject to the seven-day expiration limit imposed by Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) when set by JavaScript.
The fix is to switch your entire server-side tracking infrastructure to run from a custom first-party subdomain (e.g., data.yourstore.com) that you control, rather than a third-party domain, and serve the necessary Google cookies from there.
By using a server-side GTM container, hosted on a service like Stape or your own GCP instance, you can provision this custom subdomain.
This action bypasses the ITP restrictions, allowing the server to set a durable first-party cookie for the Google Conversion Linker that can last for months, significantly improving your ability to attribute conversions that happen more than seven days after the initial ad click.
The second critical layer is to optimize your Google Ads Enhanced Conversions implementation by utilizing the Google Ads API.
While client-side or basic server-side enhanced conversions hash and send customer data (email, phone, address) during the purchase event, the most robust method is to use the Google Ads API to send this data server-to-server.
This approach completely decouples the conversion postback from the user’s browser session, providing a much higher match rate for conversions that occur without a retrievable gclid or where the user’s cookie has expired.
This is especially vital for your audience of Apple product users who are heavily affected by ITP.
The Google Ads API allows you to securely send hashed customer data to Google, who then matches it against their signed-in user database to attribute the conversion.
This method, combined with a durable gclid, provides the maximum possible conversion attribution and significantly improves the optimization signals for your Google Ads bidding algorithms, directly addressing your profitability crisis.
Integrating a robust server-side GA4 setup, where the core commerce events are also sent server-side, allows you to use the Google Analytics Data API to pull rich, long-term behavioral data into a warehouse like BigQuery or directly into a reporting tool like Looker Studio for holistic analysis, which further helps in modeling and understanding the true customer journey beyond what the ad platform itself can observe.
This combination of server-side tagging on a first-party domain and server-to-server data transmission via the Google Ads API is highly cost-effective in the long run, as the initial setup costs are quickly offset by the reduction in wasted ad spend due to better campaign optimization from more accurate data.
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