By: Antonio Minuta, Director of Publisher Development
What is Apple’s ATT?
Last year during Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), they announced a new change to the way the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) could be accessed and used for advertising tracking, ultimately throwing the entire mobile ecosystem into upheaval. Fast forward to this week’s Spring Loaded Product Event and the announcement that iOS 14.5 will be made available to consumers in the week starting April 26, 2021. Apple’s App Tracking Transparency privacy policy, a broad set of regulations around how consumers’ data can be used for advertising targeting and measurement, will be enforced in iOS 14.5.
What is an IDFA?
IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) is a unique identifier for mobile devices and is used to target and measure the effectiveness of advertising on a user level across mobile devices.
IDFA helps advertisers in two ways:
Ad Targeting – Many targeting types (including retargeting to users based on device-level targeting) will no longer work for users that have opted out of sharing their IDFA.
Ad Measurement – Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs) built their measurement capabilities around the IDFA identifier. While Apple has announced a replacement API (SKAdNetwork) that will allow for conversion data to be passed back at the campaign level.
With the effective deprecation of the IDFA through the ATT framework, Apple removes this critical advertising measurement and optimization tool from the mobile advertising ecosystem. In its place, Apple presented SKAdNetwork 2.0 at WWD.
Apple has announced that it will give users the ability to choose to block the sharing of this unique identifier at the App level. Previously, consumers had to opt-out. Now when a user installs or updates the new iOS, a prompt will appear alerting the user to opt-in or opt-out of the sharing of this information.
Apple also reminded app developers that fingerprinting devices (i.e., collecting device and usage data with the intent of deriving a unique representation of a user) is in violation of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement. This follows news reports that Apple has already begun rejecting apps that use fingerprinting technology.
How is Freestar ready for the new framework?
- Freestar is up to date to support iOS 14 with all of our demand partners.
- The Freestar SDK is able to handle the Pop Up Tracker when users opt in to have IDFA tracked or not and our SDK is compatible and can handle if a user is opting in or is not opting in to have IDFA tracking.
- Our SDK does not have fingerprinting technology which is in conjunction with Apple’s strict guidelines. We are working to remain compliant and keeping track of the changes as the framework is being rolled out.
- Freestar has documentation specific on how developers handle privacy that can be used when submitting the app to the store.
- We have a list of all of the vendors who are integrated into our SDK with their respective SKAdnetwork IDs.
If you have any questions or you are interested in having Freestar monetize your App, please reach out to your Account Manager or send an inquiry to marketing@freestar.com.
