It is clear that Apple’s move, alongside Google’s forthcoming transition to tracking people in “cohorts” rather than at the individual level, could shake up the uniquely opaque (but almost certainly icky) underworld of the internet that is ad tech. The Financial Times reported in October that Apple’s ads now drive 58 percent of all downloads in the App Store, and more recently reported that ad revenues for major third-party app companies like Facebook and SnapChat have dropped by as much as 13 percent as a result. The company’s advertising business has more than tripled its market share since it rolled out the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) program in April 2021, which requires app developers to get user consent before tracking them across the web.Īpple has become so powerful that it has changed the rules of the game to its own benefit, and it is now effectively winning. But we also wondered: What was in it for Apple?

The company seemed to be charting a new course for digital advertising that would give users much more power to decide whether or not advertisers could track and target them across the web.

When Apple announced its plans to tighten restrictions on third-party tracking by app developers, privacy advocates-including us-were intrigued.

CC BY-SA 3.0īy Veszna Wessenauer and Ellery Roberts Biddle Photo by John Oldenbuck via Wikimedia Commons.

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