William Gallagher
Apple's forthcoming App Tracking Transparency privacy feature in iOS 14 leaves advertisers guessing, but sure that revenues will be hit.
As Apple reminds developers to prepare for App Tracking Transparency (ATT) in iOS 14.5, marketing firms expects their $105 billion US mobile ad industry to take a hit.
According to AdWeek, the expectation is that few iOS users will elect to allow ad tracking once they are prompted to choose.
"[Opt-out] rates among users seeing test prompts aren't encouraging," says Adweek, "the median opt-in rate so far is 32%. The mobile advertising sector is staring into the abyss as the privacy changes loom."
One source told the publication that the industry is facing a repeat of what happened when Apple introduced Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) to Safari in 2018. ITP allegedly caused ad firms to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in expected revenues.
As previously reported by AppleInsider, the publication also says that a significant number of advertisers are planning to move away from iOS to Android.
Another source said their firm expects an initial 9% drop in revenues. Facebook, until its recent about-face, has predicted advertisers will see a 60% hit.
"But what happens next is anyone's guess, with almost half of all marketers now scurrying for a fresh means of ad targeting and measurement," says Adweek.
Apple's App Tracking Transparency will prompt users to choose whether to allow ad tracking or not, the first time they open any app that relies on this. Alongside ATT, Apple is deprecating its old Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) and instead introduce new advertising frameworks.
Separately, Craig Federighi has said he believes advertisers' fears are unfounded, and that Apple's new anti-tracking move will be emulated by all technology companies.
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21 Comments
There are no tears in my household for data miners, online advertising companies and anything related to Facebook.
A bad outcome of this would be seeing more untargetted advertising, as there's less scope for the more profitable targeted advertising.
Advertisers can always go to YouTube. I generally see at least 4 ads for every 2 minutes of video on that shameless app.
In six months advertisers will discover that A) online advertising is not as effective as they thought it was and this change made little impact. And B ) targeted advertising was nowhere near worth what they were paying.
this is why FB and such were all up in arms about Apple’s changes. They were less worried about losing advertising dollars, as much as they were their customers finding out that what they were selling was not that valuable. They’ve been doing this song and dance for years about how they have this wildly valuable product, when those of us on this end know otherwise.
Do you click on online ads? I know I don’t and I know anyone who does.
If I want something I look for it, I go to the site directly. I have never been reading AppleInsider, or Tumblr, or a news site and suddenly thought, “Gee that makes sense I think I will buy that Dell Server”.
Online advertising is nowhere ass effective as they claim it is.