Apple
It seems that in the United States, at least in the United States, app developers and advertisers who depend on targeted mobile advertising for their revenues are seeing their worst fears come true: Analytics data released this week shows that US users choose to opt out of tracking 96 percent of the time in the wake of iOS 14.5.
When Apple released iOS 14.5 late last month, it started enforcing a policy called App Tracking Transparency. iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV apps are now required to request permission from users to use techniques such as IDFA (ID for Advertisers) to track those users’ activity across multiple apps for data collection and ad targeting.
The change has been met with fierce resistance from companies like Facebook, whose market advantages and revenue streams are based on using user data to target the most effective ads to those users. Facebook went so far as to remove full-page newspaper ads claiming the change would not only hurt Facebook, but destroy small businesses around the world. Shortly afterwards, Apple CEO Tim Cook attended a data privacy conference and delivered a speech strongly criticizing Facebook’s business model.
Nevertheless, Facebook and others have complied with Apple’s new rule to avoid being rejected from the iPhone’s App Store, although some apps show a screen explaining why users must sign in before the Apple-imposed prompt to sign up. or to log out appears.
This new data comes from Flurry Analytics, owned by Verizon, which claims to be used in more than a million mobile apps. Flurry says it will update the data daily so followers can see the trend as it progresses.
Based on the data from those one million apps, Flurry Analytics says US users agree that they are only tracked four percent of the time. The global number is significantly higher at 12 percent, but that’s still below the estimates of some advertising companies.
The data from Flurry Analytics shows that users are rejecting tracking at much higher rates than predicted by surveys conducted before iOS 14.5 went live. One of those studies found that only 40 percent, not 4 percent, would sign up for tracking when asked.
However, Flurry Analytics’ data doesn’t break things down by app, so it’s impossible to know from this data if the numbers are skewed from the app tracking opt-in due to, say, users’ distrust of Facebook. . Users may trust some types of apps more than others, but that data is not available.
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