There’s plenty of buzz (see: panic) around iOS 26 and what it means for ad tracking. At Triple Whale, we take this seriously. Because with 45,000+ brands running attribution through our Pixel, any tracking disruption has real business impact.
So we tested it (and there’s good news ahead).
We ran a side-by-side comparison of iOS 18 vs. iOS 26 beta. Across:
Here’s what we found.
No surprises here – UTM removal behavior is the same between iOS 18 and iOS 26. Safari still preserves common tracking tags (like utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign), ensuring your campaign links report accurately.
URL parameters used to identify click IDs, session IDs, or user IDs (typically employed by ad platforms for granular tracking) can be removed by Safari under certain privacy conditions. This occurs only in edge cases such as Private Browsing, Advanced Tracking Protection, or when links are shared through Messages or Mail.
As Apple explains in the iOS 26 release notes, “Private Browsing now prevents known trackers from loading on pages and removes identifying tracking parameters from URLs.”
Known parameters that may be stripped include:
In standard browsing mode, Safari does not alter or strip tracking parameters.
Safari remains Apple’s privacy stronghold, but even here, tracking parameters are preserved in normal browsing. Advanced Tracking Protection may mask identifiers in private sessions, but these scenarios represent a small portion of total traffic.
Nope. Triple Whale’s Pixel continues to capture and resolve data accurately across Meta, Google, TikTok, YouTube, Shopify, and more.
Our multi-touch attribution model doesn’t rely on single-point metrics like ROAS or click IDs that can vanish overnight. Instead, it measures the full customer journey so you always have a clear, reliable picture of what’s driving your growth.
Unless a user has radically changed privacy settings, iOS 26 behaves almost identically to iOS 18. Tracking remains strong, so continue to run great creative, tag consistently, and use reliable data. Even when Apple rocks the boat, Pixel stays afloat. See what else is new at Triple Whale.
There’s plenty of buzz (see: panic) around iOS 26 and what it means for ad tracking. At Triple Whale, we take this seriously. Because with 45,000+ brands running attribution through our Pixel, any tracking disruption has real business impact.
So we tested it (and there’s good news ahead).
We ran a side-by-side comparison of iOS 18 vs. iOS 26 beta. Across:
Here’s what we found.
No surprises here – UTM removal behavior is the same between iOS 18 and iOS 26. Safari still preserves common tracking tags (like utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign), ensuring your campaign links report accurately.
URL parameters used to identify click IDs, session IDs, or user IDs (typically employed by ad platforms for granular tracking) can be removed by Safari under certain privacy conditions. This occurs only in edge cases such as Private Browsing, Advanced Tracking Protection, or when links are shared through Messages or Mail.
As Apple explains in the iOS 26 release notes, “Private Browsing now prevents known trackers from loading on pages and removes identifying tracking parameters from URLs.”
Known parameters that may be stripped include:
In standard browsing mode, Safari does not alter or strip tracking parameters.
Safari remains Apple’s privacy stronghold, but even here, tracking parameters are preserved in normal browsing. Advanced Tracking Protection may mask identifiers in private sessions, but these scenarios represent a small portion of total traffic.
Nope. Triple Whale’s Pixel continues to capture and resolve data accurately across Meta, Google, TikTok, YouTube, Shopify, and more.
Our multi-touch attribution model doesn’t rely on single-point metrics like ROAS or click IDs that can vanish overnight. Instead, it measures the full customer journey so you always have a clear, reliable picture of what’s driving your growth.
Unless a user has radically changed privacy settings, iOS 26 behaves almost identically to iOS 18. Tracking remains strong, so continue to run great creative, tag consistently, and use reliable data. Even when Apple rocks the boat, Pixel stays afloat. See what else is new at Triple Whale.
Body Copy: The following benchmarks compare advertising metrics from April 1-17.
Body Copy: The following benchmarks compare advertising metrics from April 1-17 to the previous period. Considering President Trump first unveiled his tariffs on April 2, the timing corresponds with potential changes in advertising behavior among ecommerce brands (though it isn’t necessarily correlated).
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