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The recent WWDC state that about iOS 14:

With iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and tvOS 14, you will need to receive the user’s permission through the AppTrackingTransparency framework to track them or access their device’s advertising identifier. Tracking refers to the act of linking user or device data collected from your app with user or device data collected from other companies’ apps, websites, or offline properties for targeted advertising or advertising

Reference: User Privacy and Data Use

As per this guidelines, We need to ask the user for tracking permission using ATTrackingManager (AppTrackingTransparency) framework.

I have a few apps on AppStore, Which is using Google AdMob & FBAudienceNetwork to deliver ads to the user.

Question:

  1. What's happen if I don't upgrade these apps as per the last WWDC guidelines? Is app continue ads serving to the user?

  2. What's happening if User doesn't give tracking permission to the app?

  3. App update does make any impact on revenue from ads?

Try to answer this question respected to ads serving, revenue and impact of App Tracking Transparency

Below are all references which I had referred already.

User Privacy and Data Use

App Tracking Transparency

Google AdMob

Google AdMob : Implementation

AdSupport

Lukas Würzburger
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Hitesh Surani
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3 Answers3

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The firstly, i want to talk about the IDFA:

The Identity for Advertisers (IDFA) is the individual and random identifier used by Apple to identify and measure iOS user devices.

Bellow IOS14, Every AdNetworks use IDFA for defund a specific user, then They use IDFA to be used to deliver personalized ads to user. so IDFA help the AdNetworks can show related ads to our users.

In IOS 14, the IDFA is hidden and you and adnetwork can't get this IDFA, You must to ask user to allow tracking permission to continue use IDFA in IOS 14 system.

So my answers are:

Question 1: What's happen if I don't upgrade these apps as per the last WWDC guidelines? Is app continue ads serving to the user?

The short answers is YES, Your app still continue ads serving to the user. BUTTTTTT: the Adnetwork will do not know anythings about your user, so all ads will be random and unrelated ads

-> clickRate will be reduced -> eCPM will be reduced -> Your revenue will be down too.

Question 2: What's happen if User doesn't give tracking permission to the app?

Like the my answer 1 when user don't allow tracking permission, you can't get IDFA then Your revenue will be down again..

But in this case, Apple created an another choose for Us and Networks. that is SKAdNetwork which helps advertisers measure the success of ad campaigns while maintaining user privacy. But Nobody can make sure this API will better current IDFA System can make. So you should enable SKAdNetwork to track conversions in tracking don't allow case. To get maximum profit

Question 3: App update does make any impact on revenue from ads?

If your user allow the tracking permission, everything is OKAY like nothing happen. If not, you have the SKAdNetwork and let pray for SKAdNetwork will work nice like The Apple said.

Question 4: What is Funding Choices?

Funding Choices is the Google'Tool to help you to ask user allow tracking permission. Funding Choices and SDK UMP will create the explainer message alert which will automatically be shown immediately before the "Tracking permission" alert. This is automatically and simple. If you don't like Funding Choices, you can create your explainer message yourself to ask user before the "tracking permission" alert is shown

This is all my knowledges after 3 days researching and working about IDFA, IOS14.....

I hope them can help you something. If i had any mistake, reply here!!!. Thanks

Jakub Truhlář
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Tritmm
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  • How to enable SKAdNetwork? Is it enabled by default (e.g. it will happen even if we don't update the app at all)? Does it automatically fallback to it if user rejects AppTrackingTransparency? Thanks – pete Aug 22 '20 at 02:52
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    #1 this is how to enable SKAdNetwork https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadnetwork #2 this will be disable if you dont implement them. #3 this dependent on which adNetwork you use. I use admob and they say Yes, but i need enable SKAdNetWork first. https://developers.google.com/admob/ios/ios14#skadnetwork – Tritmm Aug 24 '20 at 02:34
  • Hi @HiteshSurani, Does accessing UUID affect? NSString *strUUID = [[NSUUID UUID] UUIDString]; – Harish Sep 03 '20 at 18:13
  • @Tritmm please help – Harish Sep 03 '20 at 18:16
  • @Harish don't worry! your code will not be affected by them. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/uuid "Initializes a new UUID with RFC 4122 version 4 random bytes." this mean when you call the init function, a random UUID will be return. so UUID is not IDFA/IDFV. your code will not be affected by any updates. don't worry. Have fun!! – Tritmm Sep 14 '20 at 12:54
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    @Tritmm: Thank you for your time to respond. – Harish Sep 18 '20 at 18:38
  • ATT popup is not mandatory now, required to obtain permission starting early next year. https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=hx9s63c5 – Abhishek Aryan Oct 20 '20 at 05:52
  • Do we load and show ad even if user says do not allow tracking? – atalayasa Dec 09 '20 at 09:07
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    @atalayasa your question is "Question 2" – Tritmm Feb 18 '21 at 04:46
  • I have enabled SKAdNetwork and implemented requestIDFA() method as google suggested Now my app is pushed to the app store without any problem. But my app is not receiving ads when the user disagrees to allow tracking.. Anyway I'm loading ad in both scenarios – Ephrim Daniel May 25 '21 at 09:53
  • In what specific case am I forced to use ATT? If my app just collects user's personal info to register him/her to my service and enable authorized app functionalities, like e-commerce, showing authorized content, showing orders, making checkouts, and so on, is ATT mandatory in this case? – Mostafa Al Belliehy Jan 05 '22 at 06:57
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The current version my app (pre-iOS 14) is still showing ads, but ad revenue has HALVED since iOS was released. So yes, it seems ad revenue is impacted if you don't implement App Tracking Transparency (ATT).

I have updated my app WITHOUT ATT and Apple now rejects my app. Even though I share no user data with the AdMob framework, disabled location tracking and IAP tracking for AdMob.

So basically my app does not track anything other than the IDFA used by AdMob and Apple rejects it.

My advice would be to implement ATT if you are using Admob. If you don't do that, revenue will decrease and Apple will reject future app updates.

hotdogsoup.nl
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  • Thanks a lot for sharing your experience.. Important Question : We've disabled personalised ads in Admob. But since I also want to track demographic data that is not used anywhere other than for analytics purpose via IDFA , will I still need to implement/show ATT before submitting my App for Apple Review? – Mac Jan 18 '21 at 09:09
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    @Mac yes you basically need to implement it for any type of tracking. – hotdogsoup.nl Jan 19 '21 at 10:11
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No IDFA means no personalized ads. Because all publishers over the years has build whole advertising services based on IDFA/GAID. Without IDFA you advertisers will not be able to run re-targeting campaigns or narrow targeting options to find target user group.

So you will receive less ads, and those you will see will have low CPM value. So your app will be flooded with cheap/poor quality ads.

You can learn more on my blog article

Wojtek Andrzejczak
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