Earlier this week was officially the big day: Apple released its new iOS 14.5 update.
To date, over one billion iPhones have been installed worldwide.
Why is Apple's new policy change such a big deal?
It will give iPhone users more transparency and control over apps that want to track them for advertising purposes. The current default allows such tracking.
iPhone users will begin seeing a pop-up that requires them to explicitly opt in to be tracked. How many users decide to opt in for tracking remains to be seen in the coming weeks and months, but as things stand right now, the expectation is that many users will opt out.
This also means that platforms like Facebook and Google wouldn't be able to effectively target a user with ads if said user opted out of third-party tracking, reducing the effectiveness and profitability of targeted ads, and seriously disrupting the $400 billion dollar digital advertising industry that depends heavily on such tracking.
Sheesh, that's a lot to take in.
Here are two steps to take right now (if you haven't already):
- Verify your domain on Facebook. Here's a step-by-step article on how to do it.
- Configure events to use Aggregate Event Measurement. Here's how.
The next few weeks / months should be veeery interesting...
