Apple Delays Ad Anti-Tracking Feature in iOS Until Next Year
Apple has announced that it's delaying the rollout of a proposed privacy tweak in iOS 14 until early next year "to give developers the time they need to make the necessary changes."
iOS 14, which is due in a couple of weeks, is all set to make device identifiers (called IDFA or "Identifier for Advertisers") — a distinct, randomly generated code assigned to every iPhone and iPad — obsolete by requiring that third-party apps seek explicit consent from users before using the unique IDs for tracking their activities across other apps and websites.
The development comes days after Facebook warned publishers that Apple's privacy-centric feature would make Audience Network, the social media platform's ad service offered to third-party apps, ineffective, resulting in loss of advertising revenues.
The company claimed that blocking personalisation is expected to cut Audience Network revenue by half or more, and that the move would hurt the over 19,000 developers who work with Facebook, many of which are "small businesses that depend on ads to support their livelihood."
Tracking via the Apple device identifier allows Facebook (and other third-party apps) to tie an ad campaign to, say, an app download from an ad placed within their apps, thereby allowing advertisers to target users with contextually relevant ads.
Although the IDFA can be manually reset (Firefox's owner Mozilla notably launched a petition last year urging Apple to automatically reset this identifier on a monthly basis), the ability to opt out of in-app ad tracking and give users more control over third-party apps is doubtless a huge privacy upgrade.
Apple's decision to place ad-tracking behind an opt-in barrier is easily its most aggressive change yet, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the change is bad news for advertisers, who rely on IDFA (and Android's equivalent called Google Advertising ID or AAID) to collect user data, deliver better ads, and track whether users interact with the ads they encounter.
As much as Google and Facebook like to claim people prefer relevant ads when given the choice, most users will almost certainly choose not to be tracked. And that's because Apple's permission prompt (image below) clearly explains in plain language what's going on behind the scenes.
"Imagine if you were out shopping, went into a drug store, examined a few bottles of sunscreen, but left the store without purchasing anything," Daring Fireball's John Gruber noted. And then immediately a stranger approached you with an offer for sunscreen. Such an encounter would trigger a fight or flight reaction — the needle on your innate creepometer would shoot right into the red.
Advertisers are also expected to be challenged by Apple's own alternative ad measurement system, called SKAdNetwork, that provides conversion rate data without giving away a user's IDFA — in other words, it enables completely privacy-safe advertising attribution, letting brands know which ad campaigns worked without granting them access to granular data on which people viewed an ad, clicked an ad, or took action.
At the same time, hampering the ability to serve personalised in-app ads to iPhone users who upgrade to the latest version of the operating system has raised antitrust concerns that the change would give preferential access to Apple, whose "Apple Advertising" tool featuring personalised ads will be switched on by default, thus giving it a platform-level advantage over competitors.
It's worthing noting that Apple isn't yet a big contender in online ads business like Facebook or Google (or even Amazon), but it does serve personalised ads in the App Store and on Apple News based on users' online activities across its own apps.
But the fact that the iPhone maker's ad personalisation will be enabled by default in iOS 14 (while forcing others to ask for users' permission) is another sign of Apple's walled garden approach, a development that concentrates power in the hands of those with first-party data and further limits other players from operating on its platform unless they opt to give in to their rules.
"Apple retains advantages that other ecosystem players cannot, simply because Apple owns the iOS platform," Forbes' John Koetsier wrote last month. "Everyone else needs permission to allow 'tracking,' but Apple retains its access to more data."
iOS 14, which is due in a couple of weeks, is all set to make device identifiers (called IDFA or "Identifier for Advertisers") — a distinct, randomly generated code assigned to every iPhone and iPad — obsolete by requiring that third-party apps seek explicit consent from users before using the unique IDs for tracking their activities across other apps and websites.
The development comes days after Facebook warned publishers that Apple's privacy-centric feature would make Audience Network, the social media platform's ad service offered to third-party apps, ineffective, resulting in loss of advertising revenues.
The company claimed that blocking personalisation is expected to cut Audience Network revenue by half or more, and that the move would hurt the over 19,000 developers who work with Facebook, many of which are "small businesses that depend on ads to support their livelihood."
Tracking via the Apple device identifier allows Facebook (and other third-party apps) to tie an ad campaign to, say, an app download from an ad placed within their apps, thereby allowing advertisers to target users with contextually relevant ads.
Although the IDFA can be manually reset (Firefox's owner Mozilla notably launched a petition last year urging Apple to automatically reset this identifier on a monthly basis), the ability to opt out of in-app ad tracking and give users more control over third-party apps is doubtless a huge privacy upgrade.
Apple's decision to place ad-tracking behind an opt-in barrier is easily its most aggressive change yet, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the change is bad news for advertisers, who rely on IDFA (and Android's equivalent called Google Advertising ID or AAID) to collect user data, deliver better ads, and track whether users interact with the ads they encounter.
As much as Google and Facebook like to claim people prefer relevant ads when given the choice, most users will almost certainly choose not to be tracked. And that's because Apple's permission prompt (image below) clearly explains in plain language what's going on behind the scenes.
"Imagine if you were out shopping, went into a drug store, examined a few bottles of sunscreen, but left the store without purchasing anything," Daring Fireball's John Gruber noted. And then immediately a stranger approached you with an offer for sunscreen. Such an encounter would trigger a fight or flight reaction — the needle on your innate creepometer would shoot right into the red.
Advertisers are also expected to be challenged by Apple's own alternative ad measurement system, called SKAdNetwork, that provides conversion rate data without giving away a user's IDFA — in other words, it enables completely privacy-safe advertising attribution, letting brands know which ad campaigns worked without granting them access to granular data on which people viewed an ad, clicked an ad, or took action.
At the same time, hampering the ability to serve personalised in-app ads to iPhone users who upgrade to the latest version of the operating system has raised antitrust concerns that the change would give preferential access to Apple, whose "Apple Advertising" tool featuring personalised ads will be switched on by default, thus giving it a platform-level advantage over competitors.
It's worthing noting that Apple isn't yet a big contender in online ads business like Facebook or Google (or even Amazon), but it does serve personalised ads in the App Store and on Apple News based on users' online activities across its own apps.
But the fact that the iPhone maker's ad personalisation will be enabled by default in iOS 14 (while forcing others to ask for users' permission) is another sign of Apple's walled garden approach, a development that concentrates power in the hands of those with first-party data and further limits other players from operating on its platform unless they opt to give in to their rules.
"Apple retains advantages that other ecosystem players cannot, simply because Apple owns the iOS platform," Forbes' John Koetsier wrote last month. "Everyone else needs permission to allow 'tracking,' but Apple retains its access to more data."
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