Apple has introduced a new privacy technology in WebKit that allows the attribution of ad clicks on the web while preserving user privacy.
WebKit is a layout engine software component for rendering web pages in web browsers. It powers Apple’s Safari web browser.
A typical website is made of numerous components coming from a wide variety of sources. Many of the sources that make up a website are opaque to the user, and some third-party resources are designed to identify and track users as they browse the web, often in order to retarget ads and measure ad campaign effectiveness.
“The combination of third-party web tracking and ad campaign measurement has led many to conflate web privacy with a web free of advertisements. We think that’s a misunderstanding,” Apple says. “Online ads and measurement of their effectiveness do not require Site A, where you clicked an ad, to learn that you purchased something on Site B. The only data needed for measurement is that someone who clicked an ad on Site A made a purchase on Site B.”
