Apple iOS 14.5 is officially released. How will App Tracking Transparency affect the advertising world?

In the early morning of April 27, Apple officially launched iOS 14.5, and clarified the following in the function update description: App tracking transparency allows you to control which apps track your activities .

The update will force all apps to ask users if they want to be tracked for advertising purposes. It is expected that most users will choose to decline, affecting the entire mobile advertising market.

As digitalization penetrates into all aspects of people's daily lives, calls for user privacy protection have become increasingly louder in recent years. Apple's iOS 14.5 update can be said to be a response to this call.

But at the same time, the threshold for apps to obtain user personal information has become higher. The precision of marketing initiated without understanding the user will inevitably decline, which will have a significant impact on the marketing activities of brand companies.

Well, according to foreign media reports, with the launch of iOS 14.5, nine industry associations of Germany's largest and most influential media and advertising companies have complained to the German antitrust regulator about Apple, claiming that the new Phone privacy policy is a monopolistic behavior.

When user information is no longer device-based or ID-based, how can brands achieve precision marketing and effective marketing? Does the existing precision marketing method mean that everything will have to be rewritten? In addition to litigation and lawsuits, what else can brands, media, etc. do to adapt to the impact brought by Apple?

Technology marketing company LiveRamp recently made relevant explanations on its official blog and made suggestions for the next steps for brand owners and media publishing platforms.

According to information, LiveRamp entered China in 2018 to help marketing companies and media manage consumer data in a secure and compliant manner while providing transparency, notification and choice.

Regarding the visible impact of iOS 14.5 on reachability, LiveRamp believes that the industry expects that after the release of Apple iOS 14.5, the proportion of "opt-in" will be about 30%. This reduction in available IDFAs means that brand owners' ability to reach consumers and measure marketing effectiveness on mobile devices or connect data through IDFA alone will be affected. For media publishing platforms, this change means a reduction in addressable advertising traffic, which will lead to lower CPM and other revenue. In addition, brand owners will also be less interested in mobile in-app advertising as a data-driven channel.

The solution provided by LiveRamp includes LiveRamp ATS, which can not only resist the loss of third-party cookies, but also resist the loss of other Device IDs including IDFA.

ATS stands for “Authenticated Traffic Solution” in English, which is translated into Chinese as “Traffic Solution Based on Identity Verification”. This technology solution has always been LiveRamp’s flagship product. So far, more than 400 media publishing platforms around the world have adopted ATS solutions.

Currently, in response to the privacy upgrade of iOS 14.5, based on the framework proposed by Apple, LiveRamp provides brand owners with multiple options to enable them to continue to connect with consumers on iOS devices. These measures include: LiveRamp will continue to develop and maintain IDFA data graphs with consent authorization; LiveRamp enables marketers to find customers in authenticated mobile traffic through ATS and On-Device ATS; LiveRamp ATS enables Safari to be reachable; and through LiveRamp, brand owners will still be able to access the largest and most popular social platform with extremely high penetration on iOS.

For media publishing platforms, both ATS and On-Device ATS are applicable to the framework proposed by Apple, enabling brand owners to find their customers in certified iOS advertising traffic.

However, LiveRamp also emphasized that the number of consents will be limited in the initial stage, but the industry is working hard to increase the "opt-in" ratio in order to achieve data-driven user reach and effect measurement on iOS devices.