App Tracking Transparency causing 15% to 20% revenue drop for advertisers

Credit: Apple

In an interview with GamesBeat, Consumer Acquisition's Brian Bowman says that Apple's change to Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) tracking has had a devastating impact on iOS advertising revenue.

"Certain clients are down 30% to 40% percent in revenue. Others are feeling less of an impact. It's a mess," Bowman said.

In addition to seeing advertising revenue plummet, iOS advertisers have also started noticing an inflation in unattributed organic traffic. That means advertisers aren't as able to tailor ad placement to specific audiences.

Bowman noted that the full impact of ATT has yet to be felt. Advertisers will begin to feel the full effects of the feature about 30 days after iOS 14.6 adoption reaches 80%, Bowman said.

Larger companies are not expected to feel the brunt of ATT as their app catalogs generate a considerable amount of first-party data, but Small- to medium-sized businesses that rely on ad revenue will need to adapt.

"At the very high end, the companies that are amassing a walled garden of IDFVs are on a path to do better," Bowman said. "Small to medium-sized developers just don't have the financial ability to move into in-app purchases. You need an awful lot of money to do that."

Consumer Acquisition is a noted critic of ATT and has in the past been vocal about Apple's moves to nix IDFA tracking.

Apple's ATT feature, released earlier in 2021, restricts tracking of consumer data unless users opt in. Back in May, it appeared that only 4% of iOS users were opting-in to ad tracking. As of July, that number appears to have risen to about 20%, according to GamesBeat.

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