Spotlight
iOS 14.5: A Guide to Apple’s New App-Tracking Controls
This is Apple's most positively-spun messaging on App Tracking Transparency, in the form of an interview with Craig Federighi.
For a typical end user who sees only something like this interview, it's easy to get why you'd believe the message at face value, without realizing there might be other consequences to your favorite apps down the line…
Privacy | App Tracking Transparency | Apple
…especially after watching Apple's shiny new marketing video about App Tracking Transparency.
If you're a mobile marketer, you have to envy the polish of materials like these, even as you think dejectedly about what they likely mean for the future of your own app.
Why You Are Not Seeing iOS 14.5 Privacy Pop-Ups
Some iOS users have been confused about why they didn't immediately start seeing ATT prompts everywhere.
While the iOS 14.5 rollout is still ongoing (Apple hasn't started proactively pushing this update to users yet, which means only early adopters who know to go look have received it so far), the whole ATT system is somewhat confusing from the end users' perspective:
- The device-wide 'opt-out-of-the-opt-in' toggle is counterintuitive.
- Apple doesn't allow some iCloud account types and managed devices to use ATT at all.
- There appear to be bugs (or at least undisclosed limitations) right now that incorrectly disable the device-wide toggle for some users.
Interesting Reads
Apple’s $64 billion-a-year App Store isn’t catching the most egregious scams
Eric Friedman, the head of [Apple's] Fraud Engineering Algorithms and Risk (FEAR) team, will be testifying in next month’s Epic Games trial. In a recent deposition he spoke of the App Review team as “bringing a plastic butter knife to a gun fight”
While this story isn't directly about iOS 14 (it's part of the big Epic v. Apple lawsuit that kicks off next week), one of the major points of consternation this week has been around ATT-related rejections: they're fewer (so far) in number than many expected, and the reasonings seem random (at best).
If Apple's vaunted App Store review team truly is struggling to keep up, perhaps that lackadaisical 'randomness' is simply a symptom of reviewers being left to their own devices at the moment.
JavaScript developers left in the dark after DroidScript software shut down by Google over ad fraud allegations
On the flip-side, much of Google's Play Store policy enforcement is done by automated systems (instead of humans).
That comes with other problems, including extreme frustration when there's no way to get past the automation after something goes wrong (as happened last week for the DroidScript team).
Industry Buzz
iOS 15: What's New? Notification, iPad Home Screen Upgrades
With App Tracking Transparency finally out in the wild, it appears Apple already has additional privacy-related plans underway: iOS 15 may include a new report to let users see which apps are 'silently collecting data about them'.
Privacy & Security
How T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T use your web browsing, app usage, and location data to serve you ads
Even with Apple's ATT policy now in place, there will always be bigger — or at least different — fish in the sea.
Cell networks (and ISPs) simply don't need to get device-level consent from users, because they're further up the food chain and able to analyze the network traffic itself as it flows through their pipes. That makes them de facto exempt from things like ATT.
T-Mobile hit the news this month because they're making some tweaks to their program, but this has been widespread practice for years.
UX
Accessing User Data - Human Interface Guidelines
Apple issued new guidelines with examples of what is allowed/not allowed in ATT pre-prompts. Nothing here is really news (similar themes have been popping up in App Store rejection notes for a while now), but it's helpful to see some 'known-good' examples directly from Apple
App Tracking Transparency (ATT) Prompts Gallery
Interested to know what various ATT implementations look like? Here is a quickly-growing database with almost 100 examples, broken down by industry.
Not included (yet), but notably well-reviewed is Snap's ATT pre-prompt flow.
How top 100-grossing games show ATT prompt
Another look at ATT implementation practices, this time as a gaming-specific analysis with some qualitative and quantitative takeaways.
It's worth noting that some of these examples don't actually meet the revised HIG guidelines (and also worth noting that the HIG and App Store Review Guidelines are technically separate policies, though presumably they're supposed to match up). It could be that these apps were reviewed and approved prior to the latest guidelines being issued, or simply reviewer inconsistency as enforcement precedent is being built.
Data
Daily iOS 14.5 Opt-in Rate
ATT opt-in numbers are all over the map at this point: AppsFlyer was predicting at least 39% a few weeks ago, and I've heard a range of anecdotal reports anywhere from 1-30% over the last few days.
While Flurry's share of the app analytics market has definitely shrunk over the years (and it's arguable that some of Apple's language on the User Privacy and Data Use page is specifically designed to target Flurry's business model), their SDK is still widely implemented. That means their ATT opt-in numbers (currently sitting at 11% globally, and 4% in the US) reflect a better picture of the entire overall industry than reports from individual apps, but also aren't reflective of the opt-in potential from a truly optimized ATT implementation.
Keep in mind that iOS 14.5 adoption is still in single digits right now, likely indexed toward savvy early adopters who are probably predisposed against opting in.
Finally, this is a good place to point out that single-sided ATT opt-in rates mean little in isolation — the user must choose to opt in on both sides for anything useful to happen.
Podcast
Director of Marketing @ VSCO: Noa Gutterman
Influencers, Re-engagement & Compounding Growth
Noa runs VSCO’s marketing function, and in the ten months since joining she has hired four team members, built up the entire lifecycle and product marketing functions and refreshed VSCO’s paid acquisition strategy.
Hear Noa’s advice for her younger self, why she has marketing in her blood, why the VSCO growth team sits within the product function, the one animal that Noa would most like to talk to, and more on this episode of How I Grew This.
Events
Will Mobile Stay mobile? The Future of Productivity in a Post-Covid World
When: Wed, May 5, 10:00 AM (PDT).
Panelists: iOFFICE, Artist Crowdfund Exchange, Amazon, Tinuiti.
Zen and the Art of Product Growth
When: Wed, May 12, 12:00 PM (PDT).
Panelists: Strava, Adobe, Workato, Poshmark.
With apologies to (and commiseration with) anyone who might be thinking “can we please just get back to normal mobile news?”, this will be another issue dominated by the IDFA Apocalypse. After all, it's not often that an obscure mobile industry topic receives top billing from major media outlets around the world…but that's what happened this week.
We'll get into all the most recent details below, but the ultimate recap of the past year is actually pretty simple:
And so far, end users love it.
Of course, nothing is ever as simple as it seems on the surface. It's always possible this decision will come back to haunt Apple — the lawsuits have already started, and perhaps we'll even see a slow-motion implosion of the iOS app ecosystem if this move undermines some fundamental component of the business model.
But whether you consider Apple's handling of this change to be tenacious and principled, or simply Machiavellian, the reality for the foreseeable future is clear: Apple used App Tracking Transparency to fundamentally shift the narrative. Pretty much any tech company not named Apple now has a potential market perception problem on their hands, and must think carefully about how users will view their stance on privacy-related topics.
Perhaps that's not such a bad thing, and as we all watch the repercussions shake out, I suspect we'll see a lot of soul-searching and more than a few strategy changes over the next year.
Alex Bauer