As Digital Journal reported, Apple’s operating system iOS 14, will be updated and with this users will be granted more freedom in relation their data. The update will provide transparency over how apps track activity across three different categories. These are: Data used to track you, Data linked to you and Data not linked to you. This move is not popular with everyone, including big players like Facebook and with many app developers.
While the iOS 14 update was rolled out in September 2020, Apple delayed the enforcement of its new rules until the beginning of 2021. This has given developers more time to get their apps in order. However, many remain uncertain as to what to do next, especially how to adapt to these changes while still leveraging data to measure the success of their campaigns.
To gain an insight into strategies that app developers can consider, Digital Journal caught up with Luke Taylor, CEO of TrafficGuard and Charles Farina, Head of Innovation at Adswerve.
Beginning with Luke Taylor, he begins by looking at the issue that advertisers need to contend with: “Opacity has always been a characteristic of the digital advertising ecosystem – and unfortunately, removal of IDFA is going to exacerbate that, to the detriment of the advertiser. With less transparency, fraud is likely to flourish, compounding the challenges of attribution and optimisation.”
Taylor moves on to consider how his own company has approached the matter: “At TrafficGuard, we already see a lot of invalid traffic masquerading as devices with LAT enabled. This has been a popular way for fraudsters to attempt to obfuscate details about traffic they are sending. The removal of IDFA is going to take this to the next level.”
Fraud remains Taylor’s primary concern, as he explains: “The push towards more privacy-focused browsing environments is likely to exacerbate the problem of ad fraud. The advertising industry has been calling for greater transparency, which is in direct contrast to the privacy-focused direction browsers and operating systems are moving. Unfortunately, measures such as eliminating third-party cookies and other identifiers like IDFA reduce transparency and make it easier for fraud to masquerade as real human traffic.”
Also offering his opinion is Charles Farina. His focus is with the impact of the changes: “Recent changes to IDFA will have a huge impact on how we measure the performance of mobile marketing going forward. What these changes mean, essentially, is that Apple users will have greater transparency into who or what is tracking them.”
And with Apple specifically, Farina adds: “With the latest iOS 14 update, there is now a required consent framework, and the app developer agreement has language specific to IDFA usage, effectively creating what we call an “opt-in” system for users. While this is a boon for consumer privacy, it is true that these changes will likely result in the loss of device-level identifiers for marketers entirely.”
Farina’s advice runs: “The key to success for marketers and advertisers is to make privacy a part of their DNA. Over the coming months, we will see more privacy-forward mechanisms for tracking provided by Apple, Google and other key players. Companies will need to invest in learning the foundations of how these new APIs and methodologies work. And at the end of the day, there’s no better solution than investing more in first-party data, which gives marketers and advertisers the ability to rely on their own identifiers for targeting users and to build trust with customers.”
