Apple and the advertising industry are in conflict again, as advertising associations oppose the way iOS 14 seeks user permission for follow-up.
This is not the first time this has happened: Apple’s adoption of Intelligent Tracking Prevention sparked criticism from the advertising industry in 2018 …
Background
Advertisers like to measure the effectiveness of their ads by calculating how many people who buy a product have seen an ad online. To do this, a cookie is placed on the user’s device when they see an advertisement, and the website where the purchase is made can verify the presence of that cookie.
Conversely, if you visit a website about (for example) drones, the site may place a cookie, and ad networks like those managed by Google and Facebook can verify that cookie and then show you drone ads. That’s why you often see ads related to topics you’ve been investigating recently.
This type of personalized advertising is more likely to be effective, so ad networks may charge more to display personalized ads.
Advertisers don’t know who you are, they don’t know the identity of the person who saw the ad or visited the website, they only know that the same person (actually the device) did both.
IOS 14 approach to request permission for tracking
In iOS 14, if an app wants to show personalized ads, it should show a popup asking the user for permission.
Reuters reports that the complaint stems from Apple not adopting a permission standard required by law in Europe. This means that applications with European users will need to seek the same permission twice, once with a GDPR compliant request and again with Apple’s request. Advertisers fear that this will make it seem more important than it is, and that more users will reject the permission.
Sixteen marketing associations, some of which are backed by Facebook Inc and Google, criticized Apple for not adhering to an advertising industry system for seeking user consent under European privacy rules. Applications will now have to ask permission twice, increasing the risk that users will reject, the associations argued.
Facebook and Google are the largest of thousands of companies that track consumers online to spot their habits and interests and show them relevant ads.
Apple rejects the criticism because it already offers a tool to help advertisers measure effectiveness.
Apple engineers also said last week that the company will beef up a free tool made by Apple that uses anonymous aggregated data to measure whether ad campaigns are working, and that won’t trigger the popup.
“Because it is designed not to track users, there is no need to request permission to track,” Brandon Van Ryswyk, an Apple privacy engineer, said in a video session explaining the measurement tool to developers.
Attitudes towards personalized ads vary, with some preferring relevant ads over generic ones, while others oppose what they consider a privacy violation.
I have argued in the past that online advertising is a disaster, and that we really need agreed standards set by law.
Personally, I think I don’t mind anonymous tracking. I am a decisive buyer, so in general I am only shown ads for things that I recently bought but I have nothing against the principle. Others disagree and strongly oppose the practice. But I have no solid views in any way: either allow it or ban it; the important thing is to agree by law what is and is not allowed.
With advertising standards legislation, we can finally get rid of the most disgusting forms of advertising and end the escalating war between increasingly aggressive brands and increasingly fed up consumers.
Part of this would involve giving websites more control over ads inserted by ad networks like Google. Currently, for example, you will occasionally see fraudulent ads on sites like ours because they do so through Google’s controls. We can only reactively block them, when we detect them or a reader informs them. Legal controls would make them much less likely to enter an ad network in the first place.
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