80% of Apple iOS devices fail to count clicks for advertisers

According to the new finding of an agency that helps manage paid search advertising most Apple iOS devices including iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches fail to count paid-search conversions (i.e., clicks) because cookie-tracking is turned off.

It is known that all Apple mobile devices use the Safari as the default browser and so do Apple laptops and desktop PCs. It is also known that Safari blocks third-party cookies by default from considerations of privacy. But it is very bad for advertisers.

Marin Software, which offers a way to manage paid search advertising, found in the course of a study that 80 percent of the time iOS devices don’t count paid-search conversions (i.e., clicks) because cookie-tracking is turned off. So do the Macs 50% of the time.

The numbers are applicable to third-party cookies not first-party cookies which come from websites users visit. Third-party cookies are served from various advertising networks or monitoring tools, and they are required for any type of retargeting across multiple Websites.

Interestingly, Marin found that Apple devices actually perform better. As part of the study, Marin compared actual ad conversions to Windows computers as a baseline. While the perceived conversion rate of search ads is 56 percent lower because of the undercounting, the actual conversion rate is 23 percent higher.