Of all preservation of privacy goodies that Apple promised to roll into the iOS 14 update, the so-called ‘Maintain transparencyWarnings were probably the most controversial, which elicited enough pushback from fellow tech giant Facebook that the feature ended is delayed beyond its original adeadline.
Now it seems that Apple has waited long enough. A user with beta access to the upcoming iOS 14.4 update is shared a screenshot on a MacRumors forum with the official NBA app asking them to track their activity on non-NBA apps and websites. In the customizable fine print that accompanies these tracking prompts, the NBA’s app notes that it will use this data to provide “ a better and personalized ad experience ” – whatever that means.
According to MacRumors, it also appears that some people using older versions of iOS 14 are starting to receive these alerts for certain apps as well, albeit “quite inconsistently.”
In a nutshell, the idea of Apple’s so-called “AppTrackingTransparency framework”- or ATT for short – is to give users control over the amount of data the apps are allowed to suck up on their phones. The juiciest piece of data users will gain control over with the update is their phone’s advertising ID, or IDFA. We have dealt with the IDFA profound previously, but in a nutshell, it’s a string of characters that identifies your specific phone across all the apps you use. If advertisers have access to this particular ID, advertisers can track you not only from app to app, but also in tons from Others ways too.
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Of course most advertisers were a little irritated with the idea that Apple would shift their data supply. And the face of this exasperated party was, ironically, Facebook. We have mentioned before that in addition to Instagram, WhatsApp and the blue flagship app, Facebook also has a third-party “ ad network ” that pulls bits of consumer phone data through non-Facebook apps to retarget that app’s users across Facebook’s myriad platforms. The loss of access to the IDFA in particular means that this ad network is losing a lot of valuable consumer data, which means that Facebook, in turn, is losing ad dollars that were used to target that data in the past.
That said, I think we can all agree that when it comes to companies Facebook is not real the most likeable player. This is probably why tactics over the past few months have told us hamfisted that the ATT update has the potential to paralyze the small businesses that rely on their ad platform for their day-to-day work. Since August we have seen this message appear press calls, for Business Blog posts, and – since last week – two full pages newspaper advertisements.
Facebook, for its part, is a bit blurry how small businesses will be affected (aside from a vague definition of bad). With actual details coming out as to what ATT is, it even resembles Facebook’s own advertisers don’t worry too much about the actual impact that comes from the pike.
According to MacRumors, the 14.4 update should be made public in January or February 2021. It looks like Facebook – and the rest of us – will see those consequences soon enough.