May 2021, the online advertising world panicked. With the iOS 14.5 update, Apple introduced a new feature: App Tracking Transparency (we translate as anti-tracking tool). This is a feature enabled by default that prevents site and app publishers from tracking user activity outside of their respective services. As of this date, iPhone owners have seen a message appear inviting whether or not to agree to be tracked for advertising reasons.
This obviously didn’t please the large groups that lived off the advertising and marketing revenues exactly. Because even if iPhone owners continue to see ads, they are no longer targeted and make much less money. Facebook reacted strongly to this function. And with good reason, because according to some estimates, revenues for the Meta group would have dropped by 11.8 billion euros due to App Monitoring Transparency.
25% of iPhone users agree to be tracked
However, this may only be temporary. As a matter of fact, a study published by Adjust company in the USA confirms that the number of users accepting ad tracking is increasing. This rate was only 16% in May 2021. Now 25%. 9 points more in a year, that’s good progress. The study also notes that the percentage may be higher depending on the type of applications. This is especially true for players who are more willing to be exposed to targeted advertising. They are 30%. And in very rare cases, it can go up to 75% among those who play very popular games.
Two reasons explain this trend. First, consumers are becoming increasingly aware that they will be exposed to advertisements whether they are followed or not. Under these circumstances, it is more interesting that advertisements are useful. Then Apple, the service publisher’sexplain why they want to monitor consumer activity. A simple sentence appears in the notification. This therefore dehumanizes advertising.
What if the tracking prevention tool isn’t the most worrying?
If this trend is confirmed, the impact of App Tracking Transparency may be weaker than expected. But it will certainly remain very high. However, it is not this tool that scares advertisers, but two more functions recently launched by Apple: Hyde My Mailused to hide a consumer’s email address, and Special Relay.net which hides the IP address (and thus the origin of the user). These are two functions reserved for Apple iCloud subscribers. However, if extended to all iPhone owners, they could have an equally big impact.
Source : 9to5Mac
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