Monday at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced its privacy updates. In short, it’s expanding its privacy protection in iOS 14, making it much harder for advertisers to track users in the mobile app space.
IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) is a device identifier tag that Apple assigns to a user’s device. IDFA has been used by advertisers and mobile analytics companies for many years to target and build lookalike audiences. It’s also used to track users’ exposures to mobile ads all to way to mobile engagements or app downloads without revealing someone’s identifiable information and only sharing the data in aggregate. In other words, it’s the primary identifier and glue to determine if mobile advertising is driving the desired outcome on mobile. The IDFA enables the predominant approach for mobile campaign measurement.
Currently, as an Apple device owner, you are automatically opted into IDFA tracking and do have the ability to opt-out. However, it’s buried in the settings and thus the majority of users have not opted out.
- From a Home screen, navigate to Settings > Privacy > Advertising.
- To limit ad tracking, tap the Limit Ad Tracking switch to turn on or off.
When iOS 14 is released, the opposite will happen. iOS14 makes IDFA explicitly opt-in for all apps. This means apps will need to ask users for permission before they can use the identifier for tracking. Below are examples from Apple when the app will need to ask the user for permission to track:
“Examples of tracking include, but are not limited to:
- Displaying targeted advertisements in your app based on user data collected from apps and websites owned by other companies.
- Sharing device location data or email lists with a data broker.
- Sharing a list of emails, advertising IDs, or other IDs with a third-party advertising network that uses that information to retarget those users in other developers’ apps or to find similar users.
- Placing a third-party SDK in your app that combines user data from your app with user data from other developers’ apps to target advertising or measure advertising efficiency, even if you don’t use the SDK for these purposes. For example, using an analytics SDK that repurposes the data it collects from your app to enable targeted advertising in other developers’ apps.”[1]
Users can select to allow or not to track. This notification will pop up for every app that uses IDFA when you use or download the app. What this means is many more people will opt-out of tracking, perhaps the vast majority of iOS users, which means advertisers will need to look at different means to measure mobile ads and apps.
What are your options?
One thing you may be able to do to reduce the opt-out rate is to have the app developer modify the language of the popup and message the value exchange of allowing to collect this data; this may increase opt-in rates. However, if you are relying on building lookalike audiences, most app developers will have to adjust the popup language to increase opt-ins.
Another avenue to investigate for mobile measurement is Apple’s SKAdNetwork, which launched a couple of years ago. It’s an ad network API with Apple. The ad network will receive notifications of app installs when ads result in a conversion. For it to work, the Ad network will need to register with Apple, and developers must configure their apps to work with ad networks.
Apple’s decision to facilitate privacy controls is good for users, however disruptive to many. The tech companies and the advertisers will have to assess and adjust, as history has shown us that this is probably not the last tracking hurdle that advertisers will face as the walled gardens continue to tighten their grip.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/user-privacy-and-data-use/