Jimmy KimCEO & Founder, Commerce Roundtable · Marketer of 17+ Years, 4x Founder. Former DTC/Retailer & SaaS Founder. Newsletter. Host of ASOM & Send it! Podcast. DTC Event: Commerce Roundtable

How iOS 26 Link Tracking Protection Breaks Attribution

22 Oct 2025 · 1 min

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In this segment, Jimmy Kim and the host discuss Apple’s new iOS 26 link‑tracking protection, which automatically strips common marketing tracking parameters such as GCLID (Google), FBCLID (Meta), and other UTM‑style query strings from URLs opened in Safari, Mail, and Messages. The removal of these parameters means that traffic arriving at a site can no longer be linked back to the original campaign, causing analytics platforms like Google Analytics to register the visits as “direct” and ad managers to lose clear attribution. The conversation highlights how quickly attribution data becomes muddied for marketers, signaling a need to rethink measurement strategies under Apple’s privacy changes.

link tracking protection. So essentially what's happening, Apple is going to strip kind of common tracking parameters, things like kind of the GC lid. Basically, if you look at it, it's like the GCLID. And then there's also the same type of thing for Meta, which is basically FB standing for Facebook and then CLID. And then there's tons of others that follow very similar parameters. You know, Safari, Mail, and even Messages are all going to have the same type of strip.
You know, I'm sure people are going, what does this mean in practice? Well, let's put it this way. You run a campaign with a UTM link, right? Your analytics show click. Well, traffic lands on your site, half of it looks like direct in GA and your ad manager is going to call it attribution. So everything is going to be a little bit muddy really fast.
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