Early data indicate that Android ad prices have increased as iOS users choose not to be tracked.
In the months After Apple Tightens Tracking Rules Inc. started requiring apps to obtain users’ consent before tracking them on iPhone and iPad, advertisers have started changing their spending habits. admeasurement tenjin apple idfa ios june.
Following the implementation of the tracking change in April, a lot of iOS users have been inundated with requests from apps to follow them, most of which they have rejected. Branch Metrics Inc., a company that measures advertising, claims that less than 33% of iOS users consent to tracking.
As a result, the cost of mobile ads targeting iOS users has decreased, while the cost of mobile ads targeting Android users has increased. These revisions follow widespread warnings from the digital advertising sector that Apple’s adjustments, which the tech giant presented as part of a larger user privacy crackdown, would restrict marketers’ access to customer data and harm their bottom line.
The detailed data that made mobile advertisements on iOS devices effective and supported their rates, according to digital advertisers, has been greatly lost. According to marketers and ad-tech firms, ad-buyers have recently used their iOS ad expenditure in considerably less targeted ways than was previously possible. According to ad agencies, Facebook’s extensive suite of successful ad-targeting capabilities suffers from a lack of user data, which lessens both its effectiveness and appeal to some advertisers.
After Apple Tightens Tracking Rules, on the other hand, doesn’t take a percentage of ad revenue in iOS apps developed by third parties and only sells ads in a small number of its own apps. Although marketers’ spending patterns have changed across the advertising products of Google and Facebook, two significant rivals of Apple, which rely much more heavily on ad revenue, it is still unclear how the adjustment has influenced overall spending across the digital-ad giants.
After Apple mandated compliance with its new monitoring regulations in April, the changes it made took some time to show up in marketers’ data. Users wouldn’t see the prompts until they updated their devices to the most recent version of Apple’s operating system, which contributed to the delay. According to Branch Metrics, as of June 22, more than 70% of iOS devices had been updated to a version that needs the tracking prompt, enabling advertisers to start evaluating the impact.
After Apple Tightens Tracking Rules, Advertisers have modified their buying techniques as more of that information has come to light. According to ad-measurement company Tenjin Inc., spending on iOS mobile advertising decreased by nearly one-third between June 1 and July 1. Spending on Android increased 10% during that time, according to Tenjin.
A representative at Apple declined to comment.
According to research director Andy Taylor, the digital ad agency Tinuiti Inc. has observed a similar pattern in the expenditure of its clients. Tinuiti advertisers couldn’t place a bid for iOS users who choose not to be tracked, according to him. Because of the lack of iOS users, demand—and ad prices—for Android users increased. According to Stat counter, the Android operating system powers roughly 72.8% of smartphones worldwide, while iOS powers about 26.4%.
For Android users, Tinuiti’s Facebook clients saw year-over-year expenditure growth jump from 46% to 64% in June. As a result, the clients’ iOS spending decreased from 42% growth in May to 25% growth in June. According to Mr. Taylor, the cost of ads for Android users has increased by around 30%. The total amount spent by Tinuiti clients on Facebook grew, with an increasing share going to Android users, according to Mr. Taylor.
iOS users’ refusal to allow tracking limits the amount of information Facebook may use to create user profiles. These profiles enable Facebook’s advertisers to effectively target their advertising, both for ads in Facebook’s own apps and for ads in apps from other developers.
For Facebook’s Audience Network service, which enables advertisers to buy advertisements in non-Facebook applications using Facebook user data, Tinuiti said it observed an even greater decline in expenditure. Clients of Tinuiti spend 1% of their Facebook budgets on this tool.
At the beginning of April, Tinuiti marketers were spending about 50% of their Audience Network budgets on iOS consumers. According to Mr. Taylor, by the end of June, they were spending 20% of their budget on iOS users. Because advertisers perceive iOS users to be more willing to spend than Android users, they often spend more per user.
One of Apple’s most outspoken detractors, Facebook warned in August 2020 that the shift would force it to shut down Audience Network. The amount of Facebook’s Audience Network division within its approximately $70 billion digital advertising behemoth is not made public. According to Jounce Media, an ad-tech consulting company, Audience Network will generate $3.4 billion in revenue by 2021.
A Facebook spokeswoman stated that “Third-party data tends to be unreliable and not typical of our business.” “While we anticipate that iOS 14.5 may negatively affect our company for the rest of the year, the effect will be minimal. The effects on smaller developers and businesses that depend on tailored advertising are what worry me the most.
According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, if Apple’s change encourages “more businesses to conduct commerce on our platforms, by basically making it harder for them to use their data in order to find the customers that would want to use their products outside of our platforms, then we may even be in a stronger position.”
According to a person familiar with the situation, the majority of Facebook users in many international nations use Android devices, therefore Facebook may profit from increased Android ad costs.
According to Mr. Taylor, a lot of marketers have switched their spending to Facebook’s owned-and-operated programmes, including Instagram and the company’s primary social network. Since Apple’s shift, he claimed, spending to target iOS users on Instagram and Facebook has decreased as well, though less so than on third-party apps.
Facebook’s Audience Network, which formerly placed a considerable emphasis on device identifiers, has seen significant changes since the move. As a method to continue serving up relevant advertisements when specific identifiers aren’t available, the business informed advertisers in an email last week that it was adding the ability to insert contextual adverts, which take time of day and the content of the app into account.
In response to Apple’s change, the email stated that “showing contextual advertisements in addition to personalized ads is part of our commitment to assist support publishers.”
