
iOS 10 to Feature Stronger “Limit Ad Tracking” Control - cpeterso
https://fpf.org/2016/08/02/ios-10-feature-stronger-limit-ad-tracking/
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shostack
My expectation is that more and more apps will push for user authentication,
at which time they will send some sort of hashed identifier to any number of
cookie onboarding services that can then identify the user for ad networks
(and pay the game owner a CPM rate based on successfully matched IDs).

A large part of the reason Google has been pushing to search while signed in
over the past few years has been related to cross-device tracking and
attribution.

For those that are not familiar with the problem advertisers face here... In
short, if someone sees/clicks an ad on one device, and then converts on
another, most of the time that tracking is lost unless you have the right tech
setup and are passing some sort of unique identifier. This can have the effect
of causing mobile or tablet traffic to look like it doesn't perform, just as
an example. That in turn impacts budgeting and optimization decisions that
could cause an advertiser to shoot themselves in the foot due to reporting
limitations. Frequency capping is also important. Advertisers don't want to
show more ads than they need to, and without the ability to identify a device,
they can't set that limit, so you might see the same ad for the same
advertiser nonstop.

Not arguing whether more tracking and ads are good or not as everyone has
their own opinions there, but the technical challenge from an advertising and
analytics standpoint is a tough and interesting one.

~~~
Benjammer
More than just a channel appearing to underperform, you can get misleading
information without cross-platform attribution. Many common user behaviors for
online shopping consist of browsing/searching on a mobile device, and then
converting (buying) on their desktop computer when they get home. This type of
behavior is very valuable to know about, but difficult to track properly and
may lead you to believe you have little mobile engagement and that your web
traffic is killing it with the organic conversions, when really it's totally
reversed and your mobile product is the major driver for desktop conversions.

~~~
themartorana
TV advertisers knew this - called Effective Frequency - the "number of times a
person must be exposed to an advertising message before a response is made and
before exposure is considered wasteful."

Thing is, we try to track every damn thing, when there's still effective audio
and visual advertising that, while not necessarily driving a measured online
conversion, may still have you reach for a Pepsi over a Coke at a Wawa while
getting gas. So where naive advertisers might make such a correlation and
believe their organic traffic is spectacular, I would think season advertisers
would know an ad campaign's effectiveness isn't always in an immediate and
wholly measurable conversion. I could be wrong.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_frequency?wprov=sfsi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_frequency?wprov=sfsi1)

~~~
shostack
So I would humbly consider myself a seasoned advertiser. I know there's a
major cross-channel and cross-device picture happening. The challenge often
comes when needing to report on metrics. Unfortunately, the saying "what gets
measured gets managed" cuts both ways. So I can know with all my heart that
something is driving latent activity, but if I can't report on it, often times
that isn't sufficient because people want to see measurable ROI when it comes
to digital media.

View-through and assist conversions try to help with this, but then you get
into the valuation question of "what is the value of a view-through or assist
conversion?" Similarly, "what is the value of a Like?"

Ultimately a company needs to build a model to back things out against their
targets, and so unless you have solid incremental lift testing data, or other
MMM-type data, you're faced with the really hard task of trying to justify
this stuff that isn't always showing measurable performance.

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dmerrick
I'm really happy to see a company so large taking a stand on privacy.

Even if most of their users are unsavvy and don't understand/care about the
implications, Apple is making an example that other companies can now follow.

~~~
josho
Agreed, but this is also classic business strategy (think Sun Tzu's Art of War
--Attack where your enemy is weak).

Specifically, Google and Apple are competitors in the mobile space. Apple is
creating a product differentiator by including strong privacy controls. Google
as an advertising company risks its revenue base if it were to include string
privacy controls. So, it's smart business by Apple to compete in an area where
their competitor cannot.

A good lesson for startups to reflect on.

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kylec

        Beginning in iOS 10, when a user enables “Limit Ad Tracking,” the OS will send
        along the advertising identifier with a new value of
        “00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000.”
    

I think it would be better if iOS just generated a new, random ID every time.
If the app knows that the user has disabled ad tracking, it could change the
behavior or prevent the user from using it until tracking is turned back on.

~~~
comex
The latter at least would lead to App Store rejection.

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Benjammer
And the former would probably lead to your bundle ID being banned from the app
store if they catch you doing something shady like that.

Every time you submit an update to the app store for review you have to check
a box that says that you acknowledge that you are using the advertising
identifier in some capacity in your app, and another that says that you are
faithfully abiding by the user's "limit tracking" iOS setting. If they catch
you lying about these things they say they will remove and ban your app (no
future updates either) from the store.

~~~
mikeash
Will Apple enforce it? That sounds like a lot of work for them to check. Apple
is really strict about some rules, but others they just don't care. Push
notification spam, for example, is a constant problem even though it's against
the rules.

~~~
LeoNatan25
Even if they don't catch bad developers at the time of submission, once users
start complaining, that will trigger an investigation and the developer will
eventually be caught.

~~~
mikeash
Hasn't happened for push notification spam.

~~~
rbritton
So enforcement really depends on whether Apple themselves would limit
functionality in their own apps if ad tracking is off.

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erdevs
As a user who hasn't yet developed a lot of trust with most adtech companies
in the mobile space today, I'm happy to see this. (By not yet developing
trust, I mean across several fronts: their security rigor, their concern for
end user privacy, their business practices and ethics broadly, etc. Would be
happy for companies in the space to prove themselves out on these fronts, but
it hasn't happened broadly yet, imo.)

This will cause some hacks in the industry, though. We might see a resurgence
of device fingerprinting within apps, and it might lead to an increase brand-
like advertising vs pure performance marketing. Also, users that have ad
tracking enabled might be considered more valuable and unless the practice is
banned by AAPL (or maybe it already is), I could see apps that rely on ad
revenue to a large degree incentivizing users to enable ad tracking.

I wonder if the default setting will be to limit ad tracking or not. I assume
not, but this could have a really large impact if it's on by default.

~~~
kiallmacinnes
> I could see apps that rely on ad revenue to a large degree incentivizing
> users to enable ad tracking.

This is exactly what I thought of when I saw the all zeros ID. Make it random
per device app install, and apps can't say "Want to see this awesome cat
video? Enable ad tracking first".

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BillinghamJ
Apps can't say that. Doing so would get them kicked off the developer program
- quite possibly permanently.

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e1ven
If I recall correctly, Snapchat refuses to run unless you give it Camera
permissions, even if you just want to view other's snaps.

~~~
endymi0n
They need the camera (roll) "read" permissions for their screenshot
protection.

~~~
BillinghamJ
Not correct. iOS throws out an NSNotificationCenter call whenever a screenshot
is taken. No need for photos permission - only camera

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pmedwards25
I am deeply disappointed, but ultimately not surprised, at the lengths
advertising companies will go to to make a dollar more.

The "choices" the typical consumer has if they want to make themselves
somewhat anonymous to advertisers are frankly awful. At the moment the only
kind of official controls are very limited and not respected or even fully
functional with all companies.

The self regulation of the industry is appalling and should be replaced with
an international committee of advertising that finds a balance between
people's privacy and the right of advertising companies and developers to make
money. At the moment, this three way relationship is skewed very heavily
towards the advertising companies, meaning the two people who are really the
most important - the consumer and the developer - are getting a rotten deal.

Oh, capitalism, how I love you.

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red_admiral
It would be far more useful to have a feature akin to how FIDO authentication
works where the app sees something like Hash(userID, appName). That way you
can track a user within an app, so if you install the same app on your iPhone
and iPad you don't have to make a separate username/password combination to
get access to your saved data. But you can't track people across different
apps.

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0xCMP
I was under the impression that thats what it always did...

A flag?! What kind of insanity is that?

~~~
lazi
It was a flag (before iOS10) which the developers were obliged to honour if
they were doing more things than just frequency counting for example. Most of
them probably didn't, and that's why Apple decided to take this step..

