Apple's Safari 11 Browser Update Harms User Experience, Ad-Supported Content, Says Coalition

Six advertising trade associations are "deeply concerned" about Apple's plans to release the Safari 11 browser update because it "overrides and replaces existing user-controlled cookie preferences" with the company's own "opaque and arbitrary standards for cookie handling," said a Thursday open letter. Signers are the American Association of Advertising Agencies, American Advertising Federation, Association of National Advertisers, Data & Marketing Association, Interactive Advertising Bureau and Network Advertising Alliance. "Safari's new 'Intelligent Tracking Prevention' would change the rules by which cookies are set and recognized by browsers," said the coalition, adding the move would create "haphazard rules over the use of first-party cookies (i.e. those set by a domain the user has chosen to visit) that block their functionality or purge them from users' browsers without notice or choice." The coalition contends blocking cookies this way will make ads "more generic and less timely and useful" and wants Apple to rethink its plan. The company didn't comment.