Only 4% of iOS users in US are opting in to ad tracking, report says

An ongoing analysis of Apple's App Tracking Transparency tool claims 96% of users in the U.S. are opting out of the ad tracking feature which launched in April.

According to Flurry Analytics, which has been tracking daily opt-in and opt-out rates following the launch of iOS 14.5 late last month, roughly 4% of daily users in the U.S. are allowing apps access to their Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) tag. The figure is based on a sampling of 2.5 million daily mobile active users.

Rates increase when taking other countries into account, with some 11% of 5.3 million daily users opting in to ad tracking worldwide.

Daily rates are calculated by dividing the number of devices that opted in by the total number of devices that both opted in and out using ATT.

Interestingly, Flurry's data suggests people are actively opting out of tracking requests. The company found only 4% of iOS 14.5 users have the "Allow Apps to Request to Track" option in settings disabled. That figure drops to 2% in the U.S. Turning the "Allow Apps to Request to Track" selection off automatically restricts IDFA data access and precludes apps from asking permission track.

Integrated into the latest iOS, iPadOS and tvOS revisions, ATT is a new feature that requires developers to ask users before tracking their movement across other apps and the web. Touted by Apple as an important user privacy tool, critics say the requirement to obtain ad tracking permissions will dissuade users from participating and thus hurt businesses reliant on ad revenue.

Apple offers a set of secure ad attribution tools as a privacy-focused replacement to industry standard tracking methods. The systems, including the SKAdNetwork and Privacy Click Measurement, do not directly identify users and can therefore be integrated without express user permission.

Developers are still adjusting to the new guidelines and a report released shortly after the debut of iOS 14.5 revealed some 10,000 apps created the necessary user request prompts. By some estimates, the App Store boasts about two million titles.

26 Comments

9secondkox2 3148 comments · 8 Years

About 3 years ago

Gee.

Sounds like the people have spoken.

LOUDLY.

Thsnk you Apple for returning some semblance of power to the consumer and allowing us to “vote” on such an important matter.

Ridiculous that it’s even legal for companies to spy on us so invasively at all.

rob53 3312 comments · 13 Years

The 4% are probably ad developers for the companies the 96% don't want tracking us!

Beats 3073 comments · 4 Years

Didn’t iKnockoff morons scream “nobody cares about privacy!!”

hexclock 1316 comments · 10 Years

I’d sure like to meet some of these 4 percenters.

bonobob 395 comments · 13 Years

hexclock said:

I’d sure like to meet some of these 4 percenters.

I'm one of them, on one of 3 devices. I decided that I want to see when apps start asking, how they phrase their plea to track, and whether they keep asking.

So far, only Dictionary (by dictionary.com) has asked, but it only provided its own prompt, to which I said No, and I did not get the request from iOS itself. So the app does not show up in the list of apps that have asked to track. So far, it has asked twice, for the first two times I opened it, but it hasn't asked since. If it starts asking again, I will say yes and then go turn it off manually in the Settings app.