Today we want to inform you about iOS14.3, data privacy and your advertising…

Sometime in the first quarter of this year all iPhone, Apple TV and iPad users will be asked to update their operating system to iOS14.3.

This change will take data privacy to the next level and may have a HUGE IMPACT on your advertising. Keep reading to find out how these changes will affect you. 

Twitter post

In this tweet, Tim Cook CEO of Apple talks about data privacy, trying to downplay the effects these changes will have for paid digital advertising, calling out Facebook.

Whilst this may be a win for consumer privacy, it does cause complications

for marketers that run paid advertising on Facebook, Google, Bing, Twitter,

Pinterest and Instagram to name a few.

What we know so far…

The app world is dominated by two main operating systems, Android (Google) and iOS (Apple). The update will affect those only on iOS operating systems, and only once they have updated their software.

apple/android

In previous updates, the default setting was to allow apps to use your data to track your behaviour on apps and websites. The significant difference on this update is that the default setting will opt users out of sharing data unless you specifically say otherwise.

Given this choice and a lack of understanding on the sort of data that will be shared, we predict that the majority of people will err on the side of caution and opt out of tracking.

android user vs ios user

It gets worse…

Even in the unlikely case that the iOS user allows tracking, Apple’s new security measures will limit the time frame that conversions can be tracked for. The conversion window will be limited to a maximum of 7 days for clicks and 24 hours for views.

This will also effect reporting. We suspect that data could take up to 3 days to pass back into platform. So if you report on Mondays for the week prior, there is a chance that you won’t have conversion data for Friday, Sat and Sunday as yet.

So whilst we always need to see how these things roll out, we suspect that the key challenges for advertisers and Digital Willow will be:

      1. We won’t be able to retarget iOS website visitors who arrived there via an app.
      2. We won’t be able to attribute sales to users buying on an iOS device via an app.
      3. We won’t be able to exclude customers that have made a purchase from your ad campaigns (based off pixel data) via an iOS app
      4. We won’t able to create look-alike audience pools from iOS sales via an app and feed this back via a pixel.

However, all is not lost! We have developed some creative problem solving solutions to help circumvent these pending changes.

Want to know more? Fill in the form to the right and we’ll be in touch.