Analytics Suggest 96% of Users Leave App Tracking Disabled in iOS 14.5 (macrumors.com) 66
An early look at an ongoing analysis of Apple's App Tracking Transparency suggests that the vast majority of iPhone users are leaving app tracking disabled since the feature went live on April 26 with the release of iOS 14.5. MacRumors reports: According to the latest data from analytics firm Flurry, just 4% of iPhone users in the U.S. have actively chosen to opt into app tracking after updating their device to iOS 14.5. The data is based on a sampling of 2.5 million daily mobile active users. When looking at users worldwide who allow app tracking, the figure rises to 12% of users in a 5.3 million user sample size.
With the release of iOS 14.5, apps must now ask for and receive user permission before they can access a device's random advertising identifier, which is used to track user activity across apps and websites. Users can either enable or disable the ability for apps to ask to track them. Apple disables the setting by default. Since the update almost two weeks ago, Flurry's figures show a stable rate of app-tracking opt-outs, with the worldwide figure hovering between 11-13%, and 2-5% in the U.S. The challenge for the personalized ads market will be significant if the first two weeks end up reflecting a long-term trend.
With the release of iOS 14.5, apps must now ask for and receive user permission before they can access a device's random advertising identifier, which is used to track user activity across apps and websites. Users can either enable or disable the ability for apps to ask to track them. Apple disables the setting by default. Since the update almost two weeks ago, Flurry's figures show a stable rate of app-tracking opt-outs, with the worldwide figure hovering between 11-13%, and 2-5% in the U.S. The challenge for the personalized ads market will be significant if the first two weeks end up reflecting a long-term trend.
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It's not too far from the drug addict model though.
The first high is free...
NO PERMISSION!!! (Score:1)
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FB threatening to charge users for access is the biggest joke of the year! I don't believe in a business model where the product (the user) pays to be the product!
Oh really? Just about everything you do business with, sells your data, you insurance company, your bank, your doctor, your video games, your tractor, your car, your operating system, you pay to be the product all day, every day.
They say you consented in the fine print, but there’s one problem. A contract is not binding without considera
Nicely done (Score:2, Informative)
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Re: Nicely done (Score:4, Insightful)
I have yet to see any Apple-served ads anywhere in my device. Can you post an example of where I would see them? None of the built-in apps have ads that I can find. The web browser does not insert ads on web pages. I do not see Apple using their data for ads anywhere. I am curious where you are seeing them on your device.
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https://support.apple.com/en-u... [apple.com]
Re: Nicely done (Score:3)
Huh. Never saw those before. I do not use Stocks or News, and App Store ads are just for other apps, so I thought of that as part of the functionality. But, thank you. I had not seen these before. I stand corrected.
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Stockholm syndrome. Show people enough ads and they will think it's the norm.
Re: Nicely done (Score:2)
Stockholm Syndrome does not apply here. In App Store, ads are the functionality that I am seeking. The ads are on topic and related to the purpose of the app: to find new applications for my phone. They are not advertising socks or Viagra or whatever. And, as I said, I do not use the other two apps (News and Stocks). I have not launched them.
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One of my relatives often gets confused when she searches the App Store and ends up accidentally installing the advertised app instead of the app she came for.
Re: Nicely done (Score:2)
There is a risk for how UI is designed, but that is a risk any time you run a search regardless of the search algorithm, whether ads are involved or not. Even prioritizing exact name match is no guarantee. I sympathize with your relative's difficulty, but I think that is orthogonal to this question. Apple generally does flag promoted search results (lately it is with a different color background).
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Huh. Never saw those before. I do not use Stocks or News, and App Store ads are just for other apps, so I thought of that as part of the functionality. But, thank you. I had not seen these before. I stand corrected.
Good for you, man, respect.
Hey MikeMo, this is what integrity looks like, learn it live it.
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https://support.apple.com/en-u [apple.com]... [apple.com]
Notice how people just slink off instead of saying “you know, my bad, I was wrong and you were right” ?
The least they could do is say “thank you” for doing their research for them. After all, they ask for it and said please.
I guess he’s mad at you for cracking the bubble.
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Go to the App Store and search for something like Google Voice. The first item is usually "promoted" and is not Google Voice.
I don't know if they are using your information to target these "promotions" or if it's just sketchy apps flat out paying Apple for better placement in the App Store.
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https://techcrunch.com/2021/05... [techcrunch.com]
"At the same time as itâ(TM)s cracking down on the advertising businesses run by rivals, Apple is introducing a new way for developers to advertise on the App Store. Previously, developers could promote their apps after users initiated a search on the App Store by targeting specific keywords. For example, if you typed in âoetaxi,â you might then see an ad by Uber in the top slot above the search results. The new ad slot, however, will reach users before they s
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Please demonstrate in any way you wish that Apple sells your tracking data.
They don't need to sell the data to monetize it.
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... what a strange thing to bitch about.
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okie doke.
Applespeak (Score:1)
Re:Applespeak (Score:4)
Well, at the risk of sounding like an English Teacher, the 'subject' for the sentence is significant.
In Apple's phrasing, the subject is clearly the user of the iPhone.
In your phrasing, the subject would be the app developer.
Do you understand the difference now? The end effect is the same, the iPhone user will make the choice, and that's in large part because Apple's true customers are the people who buy iPhones, not the people who develop apps and/or who mine user data for targeted advertising.
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No, Apple's phrasing is terrible. I'm a professional mobile developer and I'm not sure which way to put that setting to disable ads without asking Google for help.
Re:Applespeak (Score:4, Informative)
I dunno. Here's a picture of the pop-up. Looks pretty clear to me as an iPhone user:
https://photos5.appleinsider.c... [appleinsider.com]
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Thanks for the picture.
However, there's a critical failure in this system, which is "ASK app to..."
Yes, it's slightly better than absolutely nothing, but seriously - on what planet is this a competent or appropriate response to the massive spyware problems of the modern tech industry?
VMS had permissions bits *30+ years ago*, and that's the model that iOS and Android need to be using. Not this braindead "All or nothing" approach, and especially not that combined with a *trust-based* permissions model.
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VMS (which I remember fondly, as both user and administrator) had a well designed privilege system, and it's something modern OS should emulate.
But in this case, the problem is that, once the tracking ID leaves your phone, you have -no control- over how it's used. Applications can share/sell that data to anyone for any purpose (has anyone besides Facebook ever been successfully sued for sharing data that conflicts with a company's privacy policy?) So providing this setting on a per-App basis feels just fi
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"Allow apps to ask to track your activity across...". It should say "Force apps to ask to track your activity...".
Your wording is terrible, and it's easy to see how these two differ if you look at the negative (which is the "off" state):
Don't allow apps to ask to track your activity...
versus...
Don't force apps to ask to track your activity...
The first one says "don't allow apps to ask", while yours says "apps aren't required to ask". Those are two completely different things.
Apple got this right -- you're 100% in the wrong here.
Yaz
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Next up: 30% of Ad revenue to Apple. (Score:1)
Subject says it all really. Next up: 30% of Ad revenue for ads on iDevices goes to Apple.
You want to have a commercial interaction with an iDevice user? Apple takes a cut.
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What makes you think that Apple will allow ads? They've leaned hard into their pro-privacy/anti-tracker mindset and shut down their ad service (iAds) when Cook took over.
But anyone can till sell ads. It's only tracking that's disabled. I'll stay happy in my "charge a reasonable amount of money for services" zone where they don't want to track me and don't want anyone else to either.
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Before, you had applications who were making money by presenting you ad for other applications.
Now, it's Apple who have a monopoly on such targetted ad... and who will make money from app writers who wants some ad about their app.
Apple added a second ad slot in it's app store and killed rivals...
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As you point out, the only ads apple serves are in their own app- the app store. Any ads while using apps are on the the app makers.
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Next up: 30% of Ad revenue for ads on iDevices goes to Apple.
Actually that would be a really good deal compared to how advertising traditionally works.
Can't happen too soon. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully the personalized ads market will die a quick and painless (for me) death.
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Personalization for ads sold by them for their own search services is still on by default ... they might turn it off though if the PR gets too bad. In the end it's peanuts compared to their real revenue streams.
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Hopefully the personalized ads market will die a quick and painless (for me) death.
Hopefully the ads market will die a quick and painless (for us) death.
Advertisement is about manipulating consumers into consuming more than they would otherwise. It's not about benefiting consumers, no matter what the product-creators try to convince themselves. If we need washing machines, plumbers, airline reservations, entertainment, buttplugs, or someone to do our taxes, we'll look it up. We'll find you. In between us explicitly seeking those things out... screw off.
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I am strongly against all kinds of advertisement.
And yet, from time to time (ok, let's quantify: About once a year) I find an informative advertisement, something that tells me something I wasn't looking for because I didn't even know it exists. Like the absolutely amazing flower shop in my village hidden in some remote street. Hadn't they bought a billboard at the main street, I wouldn't have known they exist.
And yet, I absolutely hate advertisement. The person who comes up with a real solution - one that
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> And yet, from time to time (ok, let's quantify: About once a year) I find an informative advertisement, something that tells me something I wasn't looking for because I didn't even know it exists.
And online usually I realize that this advertisement was interesting the moment that I clicked on the link to the next page.
Then I go back, just to see that my eyeballs have been auctioned off to someone else and so I’m seeing an ad that is not in the least interesting to me.
Same goes for video suggestio
It's almost as if people don't want to be tracked! (Score:2)
*GASP*-- People DONT WANT to be served cross-site ads! How can this be!? Our advertisements serve a valuable role in society, to inform potential customers about our wonderful services and products!
HOW CAN THEY NOT WANT THAT!? /s
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> HOW CAN THEY NOT WANT THAT!?
YouTube without ads is $10/mo. Imagine asking your Facebook Friend to pay that. Even when tracking is made explicit to them they'd rather no pay $10.
Crypto is an option but it's decentralized so the surveillance-tech companies are entirely against it. Chromium especially goes to lengths to defeat crypto ad replacements.
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Does anyone in the world actually believe that if you pay YouTube $10/month they will stop tracking you?
Default settings are king, even with organ donors (Score:3)
Austria and Germany, culturally very similar, but with very different organ donor participation based only on the default setting: http://www.behaviouraldesign.c... [behaviouraldesign.com]
random advertising identifier (Score:2)
If Apple is so privacy focussed why does iOS even have a "random advertising identifier" in the first place?
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Allowing access to UDID was probably not even thought about very much at all, when they switched to IDFA they didn't judge themselves so strong they could just drop support and potentially lose access to apps important for competitiveness. Now their position is much stronger.
Back to the Future (Score:2)
For most of the history of advertising, advertisements were mostly non-targeted. Somehow companies managed to sell their wares and even make a profit. Even advertising agencies managed to stay in business somehow.
However the big difference between then and now is that the heads of those earlier ad agencies did not have an easy path to becoming multi-billionaires. No, those poor saps could only expect to become, at best, just multi-millionaires.
Please think of those poor wanna-be multi-billionaires before tu
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Is the wannabe billionaire ad industry carbon negative?
I'm an adult who pays his own electricity bills. They should be paying me to offset the energy my phone uses consuming their crapware.
Interstitials, ad density, and paying to see ads (Score:2)
For most of the history of advertising, advertisements were mostly non-targeted.
Print, radio, and television advertisements also had several compensating circumstances that do not apply to most websites. Radio and television ads are interstitial, with the user having to sit through a 90-second or longer ad break before the program returns. Print ads in many magazines are interstitial in a sense, with readers having to flip through multiple two-page spreads before reaching even the table of contents. Many print publications have had a higher density (ratio of ads to total area) than is
Why the hell did 4% turn it on? (Score:1)
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Perhaps it is turned on automatically for some?
I don't recall ever having turned it on, and definitely not after receiving 14.5, but on it was when I checked just now.
Why the hell did 4% turn it on? (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)ve turned it on just to see which apps (Score:1)
So far just one, some free ad supported (duh) convenience app - could just use their website directly.
The Apple way (Score:1)
who are the 4% ? (Score:2)
Seriously, who are those 4% ? Are there really that many developers who need it on to debug the tracking in their own Apps?
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One supposes a memo went out at all the Silicon Valley surveillance-tech companies. That might be 3% of iPhone users. Some Valley people don't know any Android users despite the overwhelming market disparity.
SV RDF Bingo! writes itself.
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Some Valley people don't know any Android users despite the overwhelming market disparity.
Or they deliberately target iPhone users based on the overwhelming disparity in average revenue per user (ARPU) between iOS and Android.
Who says users don't care... (Score:2)
...about advertising agencies, the epitome of "scum of the earth", monitoring & recording everyone's whereabouts, associations with others, & web browsing habits? Give people a real choice & guess what they choose? It'd be great if we could opt out of personally invasive surveillance altogether, in which case, ad agencies would have to use simpler metrics to sell their services to their clients.
If this is popular enough, perhaps it'll convince enough people to pay Apple's premium & get sucke