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Why Safari 11 Tracking Prevention Has Advertisers Up in Arms

October 16, 2018 By Alex McPeak Leave a Comment

Safari 11 tracking prevention itp

Safari 11 tracking prevention itp

Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature was first released earlier this year at WWDC in an effort to increase consumer trust in Apple. ITP makes it harder for businesses to track peoples’ web use for advertising, and with the latest Safari 11 upgrade, Apple has made it even more difficult.

ITP 2.0 uses machine learning to detect whether cross-site tracking cookies from third-party networks can be used for retargeted ads. If so, those cookies only work for 24 hours and are wiped completely in 30 days. Cookies are basically small trackers that follow you around the web and store information about the content that you’re visiting and the actions you’re taking.

By limiting these cookies, it’s harder for online retailers to follow your browser trail. For example, if you were to look at a couch on an online furniture store, that furniture company might use cookies to advertise the item to you at a later time because you are more highly targeted and thus more likely to buy.

While Apple’s limitations are clearly in favor of customers who may find modern advertising tactics aggressive and prioritize data privacy, marketers depend on this information and have been using it for years. Especially as high-traffic shopping occurrences such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the rest of the Winter Holiday season are upon us, ITP could affect the end of the year bottom line for many businesses.

In fact, six major advertising companies recently issued an open letter expressing their concern about the latest Safari 11 version. The letter states that with cookie-blocking technology as part of Safari 11, Apple is “sabotaging” the economic model of the internet.

Additionally, advertisers depend on cookies in order to personalize content. According to Adweek, the letter also stated, “Blocking cookies in this manner will drive a wedge between brands and their customers, and it will make advertising more generic and less timely and useful. Put simply, machine-driven cookie choices do not represent user choice; they represent browser-manufacturer choice.”

Perhaps this wouldn’t be so much of an issue if Apple devices weren’t as prominent as they are. Apple devices take up approximately 44 percent of all mobile devices in the US. And, unlike how Android suffers from fragmentation across operating systems, the majority of Apple users are quick to upgrade and are using Safari 11.

However, just because advertising tactics suffer on new devices doesn’t mean quality has to. While marketing teams struggle to find workarounds for ITP, software teams can continue to test on the newest mobile operating systems and devices with tools like CrossBrowserTesting.

By testing on Safari emulators and real devices, you can see exactly what your users are seeing when they visit your site on Safari 11. Hopefully, if retargeting doesn’t get them to come back, a great web experience will.

Filed Under: Mobile Devices Tagged With: emulators, mobile devices, safari, safari 11

Choosing Between Emulator vs Simulator vs Real Devices for Testing

March 20, 2017 By Alex McPeak Leave a Comment

emulator vs simulator vs real device

Emulators, simulators, or real devices cross-browser testing

One of the initial choices you have to make when you begin to build a cross browser testing strategy is what environment those tests are going to be run against. When it comes to choosing the mobile devices used for testing, you have three options — simulators, emulators, or real devices.

While developers evaluate the pros and cons of these choices, the answer to a classic testing dilemma may be more straightforward than you think.

Emulator vs Simulator

Emulators and simulators are both virtual devices that are used for the same basic purpose — they mimic the functionality of real devices and imitate a user’s actions to recreate operational behaviors.

The difference, respectively, is that one emulates (replicates or reproduces) real mobile device software, hardware, and the OS in order to test and debug applications within another software/hardware platform, while the other simulates (imitates or mimics) the internal behavior of a device, but does not emulate hardware or work on the OS.

The best way to exemplify this is thinking about a flight simulation. By using a simulator, you are mimicking the operation of the plane’s mechanics, journey, and surrounding environment through a computer-generated program that shows you what the procedure might look like. If there were such thing as a flight emulator, on the other hand, the device could theoretically take you to a destination the way a plane could.

In this instance, if you are deciding between emulation and simulation, emulation is your best bet as it’s more accurate and more suitable for debugging. However, emulators and simulators are often used and referenced interchangeably since they perform similar functions.

Additionally, when you think about the flight simulator example, you can see that both instances have degrees of variation from boarding a real plane, just as using simulators and emulators varies from using a real device. In real life, there are many factors that can affect the results that would not be considered in a simulation or emulation.

We’ve found that the use of emulators and simulators is most appropriate in the earlier stages of testing, where you may not require 100 percent accuracy but rather want a fast test that gives you a general idea of how a web application is performing.

As you continue in your testing process, you will likely find that real devices give you more precise observation and allow you to observe more particular aspects of a web application.

Real Devices

The advantage of real devices is in the name. Testing on real, physical devices means that you’re testing the same way that your users are operating their devices.

While simulators and emulators will come close to imitation, it’s impossible to perform exactly the same as a real device. This is because emulators can’t account for every single environmental factor, feature or user action performed on a real device. For example, emulators cannot simulate high traffic volume in the way that a real device will experience, which would possibly affect the results of performance or functional testing.

They also are known to give false negative/and positive testing results, which can be problematic in an advanced testing process and can negatively impact developers’ progress, ROI and bottom line goals. For this reason, testing on real devices more accurate, concise and user-specific, and they become essential for performance, reliability, operability, sanity, and regression testing.

Testing on real devices comes at a higher cost, however. Oftentimes, testers may resort to emulators and simulators because they’re a less expensive option compared to building a device lab for all the platforms you require. However, hosting real devices in a third-party cloud is a simple answer to cutting costs while obtaining access to a broad range of devices.

This will also allow you to perform faster testing, since you can run them in parallel. At the end of the day, real devices are necessary because testing on them will show a larger range of issues that your users are experiencing.

In Conclusion…

There’s a place and a time for emulators and simulators as well as real devices. Deciding between the two is a choice that is highly dependent on where you are in your development process. Additionally, because both options have their pros and cons, many developers will decide to us both practices for testing.

These are the main points to consider when choosing between emulators/simulators and real devices:

  • Most developers agree that some combination of simulation/emulation and real devices is best for testing.
  • Emulators are a good option in the development process because they’re a faster option, but often are less accurate due to lack of human observation that is critical in testing
  • Real device testing can be done through a physical device lab, VMs or a third-party cloud
  • Hosting real device testing in a secure cloud is often less expensive, while it allows you to test more devices at the same time

Filed Under: Manual Testing Tagged With: emulators, real devices, simulators

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