Newsletter publishers concerned Apple's Mail Privacy Protection will crater industry

As developers and businesses take stock of Apple's recently announced platform updates there is growing concern among publishers that a particular feature, Mail Privacy Protection, could collapse an entire industry.

During Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on Monday, the company unveiled Mail Privacy Protection, a new feature that effectively restricts email services or associated advertisers from collecting information about its users.

As explained by Apple in an ensuing WWDC session, emails can contain remote images that are used to collect analytics information; remote images that are opened and fetched from third-party servers leave a data trail exposing when, where and on what type of device an email was read.

As noted by Platformer's Casey Newton, the data gleaned from image fetching and other strategies is vital for marketers, newsletter publishers and other businesses based on an email distribution model. Email open rates offer insight into audience engagement and a campaign's overall effectiveness, information that, in some cases, translates into ad dollars.

Mail Privacy Protection decimates that dataset for Mail app users on iOS and Mac.

Exactly how Apple is accomplishing the feat is unclear, though the company claims its system masks user IP addresses, prevents senders from knowing when an email is opened and blocks data collection via invisible pixels. Some have posited that incoming mail is opened and screened by an intermediate server before the content is sent on to users.

Apple detailed the effectiveness of Mail Privacy Protection — and offered a couched warning to publishers — in an online WWDC session covering new iOS privacy tools.

"If you've been using remote images to measure the impact of your campaigns, there are a few changes to be aware of. Since mail content may be loaded automatically after delivery, the time of mail viewing will no longer be correct. And since that content is loaded without revealing people's IP addresses and without headers, the location and type of device reading the mail aren't revealed. And you'll see your emails as being opened regardless of if the user read it or not," said Garrett Reid, Apple privacy engineering specialist.

As noted by iOS 15 beta testers, users will have the chance to "Protect Mail activity" when first opening Apple's first-party app. The feature is also enabled by default in system settings.

As with App Tracking Transparency, Mail Privacy Protection will likely see high opt-in (or more accurately opt-out of third-party tracking) rates. Depending on who you ask, that could put a major dent in the ad-supported email business.

A Nieman Lab report on Tuesday broke down the potential ramifications of rolling out Apple's new feature.

"The most recent market-share numbers from Litmus, for May 2021, 93.5% of all email opens on phones come in Apple Mail on iPhones or iPads," writes Joshua Benson. "On desktop, Apple Mail on Mac in responsible for 58.4% of all email opens."

Ad-based newsletters might need to look for alternative analytics solutions, but Newton says the situation is not as dire for paid newsletters.

"Writers can triangulate reader engagement by plenty of metrics that are still available to them, including the views their stories get on the web, the overall growth of their mailing list, and — most meaningful of all — the growth of their revenue," Newton writes.

The impact Mail Privacy Protection will have on the industry — if any — should come into focus when iOS 15 and macOS Monterey launch this fall.

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22 Comments

foad 674 comments · 21 Years

About 3 years ago

Super happy about this feature. Practically speaking, emails are generating fewer opens in marketing scenarios anyways. People are overwhelmed and so are their inboxes. This is going affect my work but we are going to have to adapt and that is fine by me.

We need these conversations to be happening and even if Apple has business motives behind it, the bi-product is pressure on these industries to adapt.

Xed 2871 comments · 4 Years

This is one of my favorite features of this year's event and something I wished would get implemented for many years (although I admit I didn't know how it could be achieved with success). We simply didn't have much control over this outside disabling rich emails or not loading content which hampered the experience of email far too much. A part of me wishes to jump on the betas early specifically for this one feature.

cpsro 3236 comments · 14 Years

It’s always bothered me that “Load Remote Images” defaulted to Yes/On when configuring new accounts in Mail, on all Apple platforms. For a company that more recently claimed to care about privacy, this seemed like a real boner of an error. Users had to remember to disable the feature and decipher which emails were at least safe, if even interesting, to load images.
With iOS 15 that won’t seem to matter. Ahhhh… relief. Thank you, Apple.
Publishers can perhaps partially mitigate their issues by including a “like” button, for users to express themselves and create a trackable action.

For people who believe the default setting of Yes was best, there are ways to educate users during Mail configuration and/or to make the “load images” link in messages more prominent.

citpeks 253 comments · 10 Years

cpsro said:

It’s always bothered me that “Load Remote Images” defaulted to Yes/On when configuring new accounts in Mail. For a company that more recently claimed to care about privacy, this seemed like a real boner of an error. Users had to remember to disable the feature and decipher which emails were at least safe, if even interesting, to load images.
With iOS 15 that won’t seem to matter. Ahhhh… relief. Thank you. Apple.
Publishers can perhaps partially mitigate their issues by including a “like” button, for users to express themselves and create a trackable action.

Like the piece says, most people don't know about tracking pixels, and the typical user is more likely to notice and object to an email message that's broken because the images aren't automatically loaded. That's why it has been the default. Just like with ATT, Apple can't "break" things without giving the user some notice and asking them to consciously make that choice, or the user may think it's Apple's fault and turn on it instead.

That said, I've long set mine to "off" and feel no sympathy for the advertising industry not its vampiric tactics. Neither Apple nor users owes it a business model, or anything else. Those in the industry should darned well that if informed consent is going to work again them and their tactics, then they were questionable from the start. Stop playing the victim.