Browser Cookie Updates: How Marketo/RTP Is Affected

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What’s changing?

On February 21, 2019, Webkit announced the new release of Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), known as ITP 2.1 and ITP 2.2 shortly thereafter. With ITP 2.x, all persistent client-side cookies, i.e., non-session cookies created via JavaScript through document.cookie, are capped to a seven-day or one-day expiry.  Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome have also announced their intent to conform to these new policies, though no details or dates have been released.

How does this impact Web Personalization?

As a result of these changes to the cookie policy, 7 days after their initial tracked visit to your domain, the RTP cookies of visitors using Safari (or future affected browser versions) created with the existing versions of RTP JavaScript will expire, and on subsequent visits, they will be tracked as a new visitor.

How does RTP operate?

On a person’s first visit to a page where rtp.js is loaded, a new anonymous person record is created in Marketo Web Personalization. The primary key for this record is the trwv.uid which is created in the user’s browser. All subsequent activities on Campaigns, Rich media and Recommendation bars are recorded against this anonymous record. In order to be associated with a known record in Web Personalization Marketo, one of the following methods should be used:

• The person may visit a Munchkin-tracked page with a mkt_tok parameter in the query string from a tracked Marketo email link.
• The person may fill out a Marketo Form.
• REST Associate Lead call must be sent.

Once one of these actions is completed, the cookie and all its associated web activity will be associated with the known record.

How is Marketo planning to address ITP concerns?

Marketo will implement a new web service to allow RTP cookies to be set with a Set-Cookie header via HTTP response, so that they may bypass the 7-day expiry cap imposed when setting cookies via JavaScript.

Do I need to do anything to take advantage of these updates?

If you have incorporated the changes as part of the Munchkin update for ITP (which was rolled out in the last release) then you do not have to take any action.

Please refer to this link for details : https://nation.marketo.com/t5/Knowledgebase/Browser-Cookie-Updates-How-Marketo-Munchkin-Is-Affected/...

If not please follow the below steps:

In order to leverage the new behavior and take advantage of the greater expiry period and tracking capabilities, ensure that you have configured the following:

• A Landing Page CNAME
• Secured Landing Pages (i.e. HTTPS)
• For external pages, you must have configured a Landing Page Domain or Domain Alias with a Top-Level Domain (TLD) matching the external domains which you wish to track
  • For example, if you have pages on the domain www.example.com which are tracked, you must have configured an LP Domain or Alias which is a subdomain of example.com, like munchkin.example.com

What happens if I do nothing?

RTP’s ability to track users across sessions on the same domain will remain limited by ITP to either 1 or 7 days based on the browser and browser version used by the visitor. As of this posting, this only affects visitors using the Safari browser, although Chrome & Firefox may follow suit with their own versions.

When will the solution be launched?

All customers should expect to have the solution with the Jun 2020 Marketo release.

Note:

Please feel free to refer the link for the munchkin update for ITP which was part of the earlier release:

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/Knowledgebase/Browser-Cookie-Updates-How-Marketo-Munchkin-Is-Affected/...

Google Chrome Update (Feb. 2020):

Google recently announced that the Chrome browser will block all third-party cookies within two years; however, since Marketo uses 1st party cookies, this update regarding 3rd party cookies will NOT affect your Marketo tracking efforts. For further context about 3rd party cookies in general, and the industry shift away from using them, please see the following article for Adobe's stance across the Experience Cloud Solutions:

https://medium.com/adobetech/an-adobe-perspective-google-chromes-announcement-on-the-future-limits-o...