With the release of Apple’s iOS26, a new wave of privacy updates are reshaping how marketers collect, track, and measure data.
If you rely on attribution to understand which campaigns are driving leads or sales, these changes matter more than ever.
Apple is expanding Link Tracking Protection across Safari, Mail, and Messages, which means tracking parameters used by advertising platforms such as glcids and fbclids are increasingly being removed from URLs.
When these identifiers are stripped away, it becomes harder to connect ad clicks with conversions on your website, which leads to less reliable attribution, campaigns appearing to underperform, gaps in conversion reporting, automated bidding systems receiving weaker signals, and reduced audience-building accuracy. Meaning your ads may still be working, but reporting may no longer show the full picture. However, it’s important to know that tracking isn’t disappearing but instead is evolving.
The Best Available Solution: Server-Side Tracking.
We can’t undo Apple’s privacy-first approach, but we can adapt. Currently, the strongest response right now is server-side tracking. Instead of relying solely on a user’s browser to send tracking data, conversion events are captured on your server and then forwarded directly to platforms like Google or Meta through secure APIs.
This way, we can bypass browser restrictions because data is passed from your server rather than a browser, Apple’s URL stripping has less impact. Even when click IDs disappear, other identifiers, such as UTMs can still help maintain attribution.
You control what data is passed, allowing better consent handling and cleaner data processing but it’s not a magic fix. Unfortunately, server-side tracking can’t recover data that never reaches your website in the first place. If Apple strips parameters before a visit happens, they’re gone.
The real long-term solution combines multiple parts:
· Server-side tracking
· First-party data collection
· Incrementality testing
· Better CRM integration
There are also impacts of iOS26 on direct marketing through messaging and emailing:
Apple is filtering messages from unknown senders into a separate folder, which can affect engagement rates. At the same time, email campaigns may lose some click visibility if tracking parameters are removed. This increases the importance of building trust and encouraging users to save brands as known contacts.
Privacy-First AI Features
Apple is pushing more intelligence directly onto the user’s device rather than sending behavioural data to external servers. With less user behaviour data leaving the device, this is shrinking the availability of third-party data even further.
This reinforces one clear direction for marketers: own your data. Digital Marketing Is Entering its First-Party Era with Apple’s updates pushing marketers towards:
· Better first-party data collection (for example, newsletter signups, purchase history, offline sales records or call tracking data).
· Stronger CRM strategies that track beyond the lead. CRM integration allows you to track lead quality, closed revenue, repeat customers or lifetime value.
· More consent-based tracking: staying up to date with the latest privacy policies.
· Smarter measurement frameworks.
· Server-side tracking infrastructure.
The brands that adapt fastest will maintain their competitive advantage.
To conclude, iOS 26 isn’t the end of measurement, it’s another reminder that marketing needs to evolve alongside privacy expectations.
The businesses investing now in server-side tracking and first-party data strategies will be the ones still seeing clear performance insights in the years ahead.