Apple iOS 14.5 Update is Here: A Survival Kit To Help You Keep Calm and Carry On
Many app developers and marketers have been anxiously awaiting this pivotal moment – the release of iOS 14.5 and the enforcement of Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency (ATT). The implications of this shift for mobile advertising have been a booming topic of discussion and debate since the ATT framework was announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) last June.
In a press release for Apple’s new Tile-like AirTag tracker, the company has revealed that iOS 14.5 will officially arrive “starting next week” — as reported by Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern.
At Tinuiti, we’ve been preparing for increased consumer privacy on the web for quite some time.
“The privacy train is barreling across the web with Apple’s announcement of iOS14.5 and the privacy movement is only just beginning to pick up speed. But as monumental as these changes are, I actually think about it as: Just Another Day in the Life of a Digital Marketer Where Things Change All the Time, Always Have, and Always Will,” Zach Morrison, CEO at Tinuiti said on Wednesday.
“The dynamic state of play happening right now with consumer privacy on the web actually plays right into the performance marketer mentality. We’ve never had the ‘set it and forget it’ mindset because the only thing constant about our industry is change. We see iOS14.5 as another opportunity to test and learn and use data to make decisions.”
How Will IOS 14.5 Impact Marketers?
Apple’s change is a catalyst to a better ad ecosystem. If you’re collecting data, be intentional, ask for and respect preferences, deliver value by using first-party data, and invest in the user experience. Brands should already be creating strategies to diversify their presence in the marketing ecosystem and testing those strategies as they go
“With iOS 14.5, it’s time to shift to a new paradigm, one built on trust and transparency. As an industry, if we don’t lean in, technology, regulation, and people will continue to adopt more aggressive measures to protect their privacy. And the last thing we need right now is a privacy arms race.”
– Nirish Parsad, Marketing Technologist at Tinuiti
As it relates to mobile app marketing, AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) will prevent mobile apps from tracking users without explicit user consent. Mobile apps must request and receive permission from users through a pop-up opt-in form to access their device’s IDFA.
IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) is a unique identifier used to target and measure the effectiveness of advertising on a user level across mobile devices without revealing Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
Prior to the latest iOS update, users’ IDFAs were available by default, making it easy for advertisers and app developers to target and retarget consumers, deliver customized advertising, measure mobile campaign performance, and more.
These new changes to privacy management will impact how advertisers use mobile for targeting, insights, and attribution.
“Early on, the doomsayers foretold opt-in rates as low as 2% to 5%. Thankfully, from a sampling of apps that have been prompting for months already, we’re seeing a steady average opt-in rate of around 41%. It’s still a small sample, and only time will tell if that average hangs on—nonetheless, it’s good news by comparison to what many app developers and mobile marketers had feared. Naturally, there may be certain verticals or niche apps that will see either much lower or much higher opt-in rates.”
– Brian Wilson, Director of Product at Kochava
Apple iOS 14.5 Survival Kit
At Tinuiti, we are here to help brands and advertisers understand how these changes will impact your business, as well as provide an essential “To-do Checklist” and some resources that will help you formulate your ATT prompt strategy.
We recently teamed up with Justuno, the AI Visitor Conversion Optimization Platform, to create a “Data Privacy and iOS14 Checklist” which covers all the key to-dos as well as some essential reference material including:
- How to update your SDKs (MMP, Facebook, Firebase, etc.) to support SkAdNetwork and Apple Search Ads Framework
- When to add ATT Prompt your App
- How to set Conversion Value Schema
- Why you need to do a “Tech Stack Evaluation” and make sure there is consistency across your stack to ensure there are no breaks in reporting/attribution
- Tips for how to focus on building a “First-Party Data Strategy”
- How to build a strategy for mobile engagement after the first install or action leveraging marketing tools like email, push notifications, in-app messages, SMS, and/or chatbots
Marketers must develop new methods for delivering targeted advertising and measuring performance while complying with privacy requirements. Luckily, we have a variety of resources available to help inform advertisers on everything they need to know about the iOS 14.5 update including our IDFA Guide, Navigating the IDFA Opt-In on iOS 14.5, and our upcoming webinar on Thursday, May 13, “Decoding the Impact of the iOS 14 Update.”
Want to learn more? Check out “The Future of the Web” to find out everything you need to know about the new restrictions, cookies, IDFA, first-party data, and all things privacy from our Tinuiti experts.
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