Monday, October 05, 2015

Is iOS 9 Content Blocking Fragging Your Analytics?

Last month, Apple rolled out the ability to block certain web content via applications, like Ad Block.  these don't just block the annoying advertisements, they also block important tracking metrics for your website and business.  Two apps have made it into the top 100 of the App Store so far.  So, what impact are they having on your mobile business?

I took a few minutes to check for my employer.  I created a segment in Adobe Omniture for IOS devices running a Safari browser, then set up an Anomaly report on page views and Occurrences.  Turning the dates back a bit to give the anomaly algorithm more to work from, this is what I found:

In a nutshell?  Nothing.  We'd be looking for traffic drops in iOS Safari after September 16th.  What we saw that was out of the norm was traffic peaks for the iPhone pre-order and iPhone launch.  Traffic is trending upward for mobile, expected for the fall device refresh season.

Adobe is reporting similar: "What is the impact of ad blocking apps across Adobe’s customer base? So far, it’s not measurable. [...]   Adobe’s Digital Index team has access to traffic data across hundreds of sites, and they analyzed the Safari traffic trend over the last couple months. How much has Safari traffic dropped since the release of iOS 9? Nada. "

From a web metrics provider and analyst point of view, that's great news.

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