Cross-domain tracking limitations
Current solution
Since the switch to the new data collection system (Universal Collect) and the release of Tag V3 the cross-domain tracking feature suffered from limitations due to some browsers storage politics and implementation.
To counter these new limitations, AB Tasty developed a cross-domain tracking solution based on an iframe.
Usually, the Tag is saving the information in a cookie or a localStorage entry labelled as ABTasty. To keep track of visitors through different domains the Tag is creating an iframe and saving those same information into the localStorage of this iframe.
The iframe source is https://try.abtasty.com/cross-domain-iframe.html The localStorage name of the iframe is the identifier of the client's account.
When the Tag is initialised on a page, it checks if it should use the cross-domain iframe according to the settings of the account.
If so, it appends the iframe in the DOM as a hidden element and saves information into the website’s cookie/localStorage but also in the iframe’s localStorage. If the visitor doesn't have a cookie or localStorage, then the Tag is asking the iframe if there is some data for this visitor and this account.
This method is considered as a third-party cookie by most of the browsers.
Safari issue with current solution
With ITP, Safari is partitioning the third-party iframe's storage according to the main page's domain. It means that storage of the iframe try.abtasty.com is only accessible from the page which sets it.
Even if the iframe has the same source, the storage is different and example1.com can't access the iframe's storage of example2.com.
It impacts all the visitors that are using Safari and make cross-domain tracking feature not working.
Chrome issue with current solution
The AB Tasty's cross-domain tracking solution is considered by Google Chrome as a third-party cookie. In incognito mode, Chrome activates by default the option "Block third-party cookies". It means that the Tag can't write in the localStorage of the cross-domain-iframe.html iframe.
It impacts all the visitors that are using an incognito window to navigate on the website of the clients. But it could be considered as a minimal impact as this incognito mode is used to avoid being tracked by the websites.
Workaround for QA
To deactivate this default behavior and allow you to QA your campaign you can go on chrome://settings/cookies and select "Allow all cookies" option.
The other method to do it is to deactivate the "Block third-party cookies" option each time you open a new incognito window.
Last updated
Was this helpful?