iOs 14 & IDFA: what’s the current state of IDFA usage by mobile apps?
Mobile Marketers Beware
App use is more prevalent then ever, however, by now we are all familiar with the story about the lack of support for Advertising Identifiers in iOs14. So, without further ado, here is a quick recap:
- on June 22nd Apple presented the new version of their operating system for iPhone, iOs14. Big news, Apple is dropping support for the IDFA, the technology that let advertisers track users and personalize ads
- In August Apple announced the first releases of iOs 14 would support IDFA. But is just a delay, not a change. At some point in January 2021 the support for IDFA would be removed. This is because the huge change Apple is imposing for the whole industry needs some time. Mobile apps, SDKs and data analysis software used for tracking need to be updated, and this will reasonably need lots of work. So Apple is giving the whole industry some more time.
- iOs 14 as been released (in mid September) together with iPhone 12 models. The current releases, as of November, 8 is 14.2. This versions still supports IDFA.
- At some point, around January 2021 a new update to iOs 14 will be released. This will drop support for IDFA (unless users opt-in)
In the meantime some advertisers (including us @ Mapendo) have started buying traffic with limited ad tracking (i.e. no IDFA). For example the guys @ Liftoff are seeing promising results with LAT (limit ad-tracking) traffic both in terms of quality and performance price.
Mobile apps are preparing for this change. Same is happening for advertisers (and the ad-tech industry). But what’s the current situation? Are apps implementing the users consent, for users to be tracked? Are apps switching to different models (basically less tracking)?
We have carefully analyzed the data from Mapendo databases in order to provide some insight as to what is happening. In particular, we’ve been looking at the numbers of real time auctions providing advertisers with IDFA. When the supports for IDFA will be dropped, advertisers will see the Advertising ID only for those users who accepted to be tracked. Before iOs14 100% of mobile in-app traffic supported IDFA (well almost 100%…). In the last month things have changed a lot. It seems mobile apps are getting ready for iOs14.
Here’s a quick chart with the percentage of bid requests we receive in the USA (only for iOs obviously) providing the advertisers with IDFA:
As you can see, it seems like mobile apps are not implementing the opt-in through a form, but rather more and more apps are simply skipping the IDFA. It seems like the publishers’ world has already adapted to the upcoming change.
Mapendo is a tech platform for app user acquisition. We deliver large volumes of CPA & CPI conversions to the best mobile apps available with A.I.
Website: https://mapendo.co/
- Email: info@mapendo.me
