Cheat Sheet: Apple has set a date for its privacy push on advertising. Now comes the hard part

By Seb Joseph

It’s finally here. After months of speculation and confusion, Apple’s much-anticipated privacy crackdown is coming into force. While — in theory — preparation for this moment has been going on behind the scenes for some time, the market seems ill-prepared for what comes next. No need to run for the hills just yet, though — at least not until you’ve read this primer on everything you need to know about Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature.

What is ATT?

It’s a prompt notification for Apple device users to give apps access to the mobile identifier tied to their device so advertising businesses can track them. The prompt reads something like this: “app X would like permission to track you across apps and sites owned by other companies.” The message is followed by two buttons that say either “allow tracking” or “don’t allow tracking.”

What happens if someone refuses to share their data?

If someone decides they don’t want to be tracked, then advertisers can’t serve them targeted ads — whether it’s in-app or the web — irrespective of how that data is gained. This means no trying to concoct alternate identifiers to the IDFA, which can use everything from hashed emails to device fingerprinting. And there’s the kicker for advertisers: usually, there’s a workaround for this sort of issue. Apple, however, has tried to snuff them all out.

Are no workarounds a bad thing?

It is if you’re a business that relies on aggregating user-level data for tracking. If this happens, then targeting and measurement become tricky. In fact, targeting ads is pretty much non-existent in Apple’s eyes, while the measurement of them is blunt at best thanks to the SKADNetwork. This is how attribution for mobile ad campaigns will be done when people opt out of being tracked. Similarly, there’s Private Click Measurement, which is how web events will be attributed for those same people. Essentially, both solutions aggregate advertising data at the level of the campaign, not the user, for one event only.

OK. So blunt tracking means bad news for a lot of companies?

Normally, when someone clicks on an ad, that data and any subsequent actions they take are tracked by the company behind it. This goes away once someone decides not to be tracked. Instead, the company can only attribute one action to the campaign per user and only at the campaign level so any granularly about how that person was influenced by the ad is lost. When this happens, marketers can’t track revenue generated by ad campaigns. And if only one event is attributed to the campaign then it limits what marketers can optimize against — not to mention what they can target against. Naturally, marketers reliant on retargeting and granular targeting are freaking out over the amount of money they miss out on once those prompts start showing up.