Location marketers are upset with Apple’s move on IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) tool on iOS 14 which gives the users to option to opt-in/ opt-out when it comes to advertisers tracking their mobile data. iOS 14, currently in beta phase, is set to launch next month. The tech giant had announced at its annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June that it the new version of iOS will ask users if they want to be tracked by the app. It is the latest in privacy protection moves by Apple after it enabled alerts for location-based tracking in the current version of the OS.
Naturally, this creates a huge challenge for mobile marketers, as it is predicted that a huge majority of users will decide to opt out.
While location marketing players were already expressing concerns over this, now none other than Facebook has come out openly against move saying “this may severely impact publishers’ ability to monetize through Audience Network on iOS 14.” In multiple blog posts published yesterday, the social media giant said, and despite its best efforts the move may render its Audience Network “so ineffective on iOS 14 that it may not make sense to offer it on iOS 14 in the future”.
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“Like all ad networks on iOS 14, advertiser ability to accurately target and measure their campaigns on Audience Network will be impacted, and as a result publishers should expect their ability to effectively monetize on Audience Network to decrease,” Facebook said. It added that during testing it has observed more than a 50% drop in Audience Network publisher revenue when personalization was removed from mobile app ad install campaigns, but also warned that in reality, the impact to Audience Network on iOS 14 may be much more.
While Facebook assured that it wouldn’t collect IDFA information on its own apps on iOS 14 devices, but added it may revisit this decision as Apple offers more guidance. Instead it would release an updated version of the Facebook SDK to support iOS 14 to provide support for Apple’s SKAdNetwork API, which limits the data available to businesses for running and measuring campaigns. “In light of these limitations, and in an effort to mitigate the impact on the efficacy of app install campaign measurement, we will also ask businesses to create a new ad account dedicated to running app install ad campaigns for iOS 14 users,” it said.
How does it affect mobile marketers?
The Identifier for Advertisers, or IDFA, is a random identifier assigned by Apple to individual devices. Just like Google’s advertising identifier (GAID) It is used by advertisers to track data for delivering customized advertising.
“Mobile marketers will be significantly impacted because IDFA is the primary way that users are identified on iOS devices for ad targeting, user tracking and attribution. The new requirement is 100% opt-in and the language that Apple requires includes the phrase ‘allow tracking’ and explains that user will be shared with third parties ‘across apps and websites owned by other companies,” explains Greg Sterling, VP of Insights at location marketing company Uberall.
The “language”used by Apple in the new user permission dialog in iOS 14 is noteworthy. As Forbes columnist John Koetsier had pointed out, Apple killed the IDFA without killing the IDFA, by taking it out of the depths of the Settings app where almost no-one could find it — and making it explicitly opt-in for every single app.”
For instance, in case an app wants to use the IDFA, iOS 14 will present mobile phone users with a big dialog like this:
“Would you say “yes” to allowing an app or brand permission to “track you across apps and websites owned by other companies?” Koetsier asked.
The answer is anybody’s guess. “The opt-in rates will be quite low. Mobile marketers will have some room to customize the messaging and “make their case” to users. But I wouldn’t be surprised if opt-in rates are below 20%,” adds Sterling.
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What this means is that marketers and app publishers will be handicapped in their ability to track and transmit data to ad networks and it will significantly reduce the ability to do precise ad targeting or otherwise generate revenue from user data by selling it.
This means also that location data will be less and less available from iOS devices. Marketers will have to do much more modeling and use alternative tracking methodologies (e.g., email, phone number), which are harder to obtain and don’t scale as easily. Separately, users will be able to designate precise or approximate location to enable apps that require location to function. This is a distinct set of privacy controls that are separate from the data tracking permissions.
How is Google expected react?
Now that Apple is marketing privacy as a device differentiator Google will be under pressure to do something similar with its Android system, more so because the data privacy debate is getting noisier. But, Sterling feels Google will resist for as long as “politically” feasible or until it develops an alternative tracking capability. But this is underway now given that third party cookies are disappearing as well.
“It’s great for consumers, bad for marketers. Marketers will have to be very transparent but also creative in selling or justifying tracking to their users. It will be a very challenging case for them to make,” says Sterling, while adding this doesn’t impact companies like Uberall that uses and manages POI and business listings data but doesn’t do ad targeting or attribution for customers. Uberall has a location-targeted ads product for Google and Facebook but that relies on their systems and data.
