The proliferation of new advertising regulations over the course of the last year has been dizzying. Just last week, a new, and potentially damaging, rule was put in effect by Apple re: the famed IDFA. For the unitiated the IDFA is Apple’s version of the ad ID that is used by marketers to monetize app usage. When a user visits an app, their IDFA — an anonymous hexadecimal string of characters — is passed to 3rd parties for the purposes of attribution and data sharing. That data consists of location, demographics, browsing history, content and some device meta data.
There has long been debates about just how much information an app can/should consume to pass along to these third parties. The ad ID (Apple’s IDFA and Google’s GAID chief among them) have been scrutinized for the better part of the last decade. We’re not going to go over that here, rather talk about the latest in IDFA usage limitation, via the AppTrackingTransparency framework, which is app-by-app requests to use this information for the aforementioned purposes.
What does app-by-app permission granting mean?
Basically, every time a user downloads an app, they will be asked whether they’ll grant that app permission to track the user. Here’s how it’ll look:
With this change, the power goes back into the hands of the user in a much more transparent way. Previously, a user would have to go through a series of clicks to either reset their IDFA, or privatize it altogether. Now, it’s a simple click. While Apple specifically did’t identify whether current apps, already downloaded, will have to do this, the prevailing wisdom is that they will.
The downstream ramifications
As you can probably imagine, this changes the game significantly in a major way. Apple is essentially functioning as Hodor to developers – as in they’re holding the door closed unless the user gives specific permission to that app to open up.
Great! Apps can no longer track users without explicit consent. However, there are a number of things that might not be so great for the user.
- This could cause all of those previously free apps to institute prescription models
- In-app ads will become less relevant to the user
- Brands won’t be ale to measure how well their ads are working causing them to spend less in digital channels. Go back to step one
Since this upsets the revenue model, will fewer small app developers be disincentivized to create new apps, slowing the rate of innovation? Only time will tell. However, it is clear that this is a game changer for the industry, as Apple has now decided to hold the door.
