iOS 18 Distraction Mode and Adobe Analytics

[Joseph_Making]

Hi Everyone! 

With the release of Distraction mode from iOS 18, is anyone familiar with some reporting issues in Adobe analytics? 
namely: 
1) Are there any issues with distraction mode preventing adobe assets from loading? 
2) Do targeted ads gets reported as loading in AA even though distraction mode has blocked them? 

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Hi, 

As far as I am aware, the "hide distracting items" is a manual process where users have to chose visual elements on the page to hide them... it's doubtful that anyone is going to find the 1x1 pixel that is Adobe Analytics and hide it.

This should not impact JS resources (which have no visual component), or the actual tracking (unless someone can actually find the tracking pixel to hide it)

If you are using Adobe Launch to load visual elements to the page, or Adobe Target to personalize the site, as those are visual elements, they might be impacted if a users chooses to hide them.

As for if the targeted ads being tracked being tracked as loaded... that really depends on how you are tracking them, and how your ad server works... the only way to know for sure is to test it yourself and see what happens... 

[bjoern__koth]

It's a manual process anyway where the user can choose what to hide. Presumably, click tracking in these items (if any) will not be captured anymore.

I would be surprised if this had a major impact on your data (unless you have elements which are so obnoxious that most users want to hide them (which would surely indicate that these items should be redesigned...)

Have you noticed any significant difference on iOS 18?

[Joseph_Making]

Thank you both! very helpful. We are seeing a low proportion of people using iOS 18 + safari, but still an important size to monitor. 

Also, in most cases I can find, if I hide an advertisement with distraction mode and refresh the page, adobe analytics still recognized the ad as loaded. 

Anyone have any ideas on how to track if someone is hiding any elements using distraction mode? not necessarily the specific element they are hiding, just of they have it enabled anywhere. 

[Jennifer_Dungan]

That's a very cool idea, to track if it's being used....

I am not sure where iOS is storing that information, or if it would be retrievable in some fashion... 

I don't have a Mac so I can't test this, but I may try and connect with someone on my team with a Mac to see if we can find anything...

[bjoern__koth]

Reading through the description, it seems highly unlikely that this is list of hidden items is accessible through Javascript.

My first idea would be: if I can read out what was blocked, maybe I can recreate it somehow

https://medium.com/@satishlokhande5674/apples-new-distraction-control-feature-in-safari-how-it-works...

So yeah no, this is more or less an extended ad blocker that makes sure your "annoying" content parts are hidden.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

If the data is stored in the LocalStorage for the domain, then you can read that with JS...  if the data is stored deeper then you're right, that won't work....

The problem is, unless there is something you are sure a lot of people are going to be blocking, you can't really check every element on the page...  and a lot of those elements are likely to be things like banners and overlays, that don't show consistently...  and even at that... to tell if something is hidden, it depends on how it's removed... is the node being deleted from the DOM? Is it just being hidden with CSS? So the code to detect these would change depending on the actual behaviour (which non of these articles talk about... they might as well say that it "magically vanishes" as a wizard waves his hands)

So IF local storage is being used, there's a chance that this might be trackable.... otherwise I think the code to detect it might be a little more effort than is worth it.

[bjoern__koth]

Checked on MacOS, nothing in localStorage nor sessionStorage, so no real API we could tap into.

Must be a native app feature that injects / removes items from the DOM as it gets rendered

[bjoern__koth]

@Joseph_Making if you've got the feeling that specific items are no longer tracked because they might be hidden, maybe do it the other way around and track when they aren't visible / in the DOM but should be. I would assume iOS is physically removing them.

From there you can do a break down by OS, maybe that gives insights about the usage?

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Yeah, that figures... Apple is the worst enemy of analytics...