Apple iOS 14 includes new features that will impact advertisers

Apple announced the new features of iOS 14 last month at the WWDC 2020. The updates, including new location sharing restrictions, and changes to user privacy, will have a lasting ripple effect throughout the mobile advertising industry.

The takeaways:

While Apple hasn’t outright revoked its identifier for advertisers (IDFA), it has given users the choice to opt-in or opt-out before launching any app.
This will make it much harder for advertisers to target ads, and measure their effectiveness on any iOS device.
Apple said it will allow users to share their approximate location with apps, rather than precise location as is currently the case. Last year, Apple allowed users to share their location once so that apps can’t track a person on a daily basis.

The back story: This marks the latest of many controversies between advertisers and tech giants, like Facebook and Google, who make most of their profit through targeted advertising.

In 2015, Apple CEO Tim Cook said its Silicon Valley rivals are “gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it.” Apple, who’s profit comes from selling hardware, “elected not to do that,” said Cook.

It all adds up:

AppsFlyer estimates total mobile app install spend at close to $80 billion in 2020.
Consumer spend on iOS reached $15 billion in Q1 2020, compared to $8.3 billion on Android.
This represents a growth of 5% year-over-year on both platforms.

The bigger picture: While the move marks an improvement in user privacy, it also poses a set of new challenges for companies and advertisers alike:

“Apple’s decision to essentially kill off the IDFA, while expected, is fundamentally changing how measurement is handled in mobile advertising,” former Rovio VP and current mobile consultant Eric Seufert, told Forbes. “It’s impossible to overstate how impactful this change is: almost every large mobile-first business is completely dependent on performance marketing on mobile for revenue growth. Mobile app developers across every vertical are now scrambling to come up with a strategy for continuing operations as iOS 14 rolls out.”