Compliance with platform privacy policies like AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) is now the way of the world. Doing more with less data has become the priority for the marketers and product leaders of most mobile apps today. They are in a race against time to build value for their users within ever-changing privacy norms, and it can be daunting for mobile app growth leaders to keep up with what is necessary for compliance and research where to find the solutions.
This is where Branch has come to the rescue, with the best tracking compliance functionality in the attribution industry: SafeTrack™.
What is Branch’s SafeTrack™?
Since the release of iOS 14.5 in April, SafeTrack has been automatically applied to all Branch links created to measure ad campaigns. This includes disabling attribution matching via probabilistic techniques until after users give consent via the ATT prompt, as required by Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency policy. We continued our robust support for attribution data re-capture when users give consent (Branch Ads Analytics Changes for iOS 14.5), and we also continued offering our superior deferred deep linking functionality decoupled from attribution, empowering great UX without requiring ATT consent for all users.
Customers have shared their appreciation for this best-in-class offering. SafeTrack offers the most compliant, industry-leading way to track mobile ads, and customers who use our Universal Ads attribution product can rest assured that their ad links are designed to behave in full compliance with all applicable platform policies for ad tracking, including Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency policy.
Since the launch of iOS 14.5, some customers have shared with us that they have compliance use cases other than basic ad campaign tracking that they believe fall within the scope AppTrackingTransparency, and which they want to ensure are attributed in compliance with the ATT policy. To help facilitate these use cases, we have expanded the scope of SafeTrack: our Enterprise customers may now choose to disable matching via probabilistic techniques for all of their app’s Branch links.
While we don’t expect this expanded SafeTrack configuration option to be necessary for the vast majority of Branch customers (it brings limitations to both deep linking and measurement of owned and earned channels, neither of which is in scope of the ATT policy), we’re excited to offer this additional flexibility to support customers with highly specific compliance requirements.
| SafeTrack™ | By Default | Request to Enable |
| Ad links | X | |
| All Branch links | X* |
* Customized SafeTrack configuration is currently available for Enterprise clients.
Next Steps
As platform-level privacy policies continue to mature over the next few years, we anticipate a lot of change in every direction, but the strong march toward user privacy is certain. Branch will continue to invest in our SafeTrack™ configuration options based on evolving customer needs to keep you in compliance, allowing you to focus on your business and leave the ongoing technical complexity of this task to us.
If you would like to learn more about SafeTrack™ customization options, please reach out to your Branch CSM.