Do you feel the cold front coming in? Even as summer begins, we’re seeing a preview of what is to come this fall that will impact the mobile advertising ecosystem, and those who use it.
Late April started with Apple’s launch of App Tracking Transparency, giving users the choice on if they consented to have their data shared. Reasons varied between apps, but ATTprompts.com has a amazing gallery of summitted prompts screenshots available for review.
Consent Rates, as disclosed by mobile app analytics platform Flurry are not positive. As of June 1st, the global consent rate for the apps that deploy their SDK sits at 15% worldwide. The USA specifically, is worse off, with a 7% consent rate. While these rates will climb as adoption of iOS 14.5 takes hold, I think I am safe to say that this a severe blow to the advertising industry, as it’s unlikely to ever recover enough to reach high double digit percentages.
Just over a month later, Google has announced changes for it’s own advertising id (the GAID).
As part of Google Play services update in late 2021, the advertising ID will be removed when a user opts out of personalization using advertising ID in Android Settings. Any attempts to access the identifier will receive a string of zeros instead of the identifier. To help developers and ad/analytics service providers with compliance efforts and respect user choice, they will be able to receive notifications for opt-out preferences. Additionally, apps targeting Android 12 will need to declare a Google Play services normal permission in the manifest file.
This Google Play services phased rollout will affect apps running on Android 12 devices starting late 2021 and will expand to affect apps running on devices that support Google Play in early 2022. In July, we will provide an alternate solution to support essential use cases such as analytics and fraud prevention.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6048248
This change, which will likely mirror a similar iOS feature, would make any technology or service using the GAID to see all uses whom have disabled the feature as the same user (a string of zeros). So unless the GAID was combined with some secondary identifier, all users whom have opted out – would appear to be the same person to the remote system.
Google has gone on to say they will be releasing more guidance around this in July of 2021, particularly for use cases involving analytics and fraud prevention.
As for the impact on the Mobile advertising industry – this is may hurt, but I expect it to be a repeat of what already happened on iOS when Apple adopted this approach in past years. So far, at least, Google’s change is less impactful due to the fact that users will have to find and adjust the setting manually. This is in contrast to Apple’s recent change of forcing a prompt prior to data collection. This manual opt-out process is therefore likely to not affect advertising to the same degree that Apple’s recent change has done.
Something else which will limit the impact would be the state of Android fragmentation. It’s unlikely that old Android devices will have the ability to obtain updates which should give this rollout a much longer timespan than the rapid adoption we saw of iOS 14. I do not expect this to change in the short term, so I consider this a pretty safe bet.
While we still lack details, a few things are clear. If the GAID is the only identifier you are using on Android – you’ll likely see a minimal decline in the number of unique IDs you see. If that’s the primary identifier used for a service such as recommendations – then folks being served those recommendations may start to see each others recommendations (which is bad for a number of reasons).
What brands should focus on short term, is seeking to understand their use of the GAID in Androids ecosystem and what that may impact. Then pencil in changes to your roadmap for changes to the Android app, and those related systems as needed. Finally, brands should follow along on the forthcoming details, to determine exactly what needs to be changed, and the timeline they have to complete those changes and still be in compliance of the Google Play Store.