The IDFA (device-specific Identifier for Advertising) deprecation and new privacy feature have been a major topic of discussion in the mobile marketing industry since they were first announced by Apple in 2020. These modifications led to certain implications for mobile marketing and user acquisition (UA) in particular. Let’s look at what has changed and how these changes affect attribution and your targeting efforts.

Before the release of iOS 14, LAT was the only way for users to opt out of passing their IDFA. If enabled, installs weren't attributed to Apple Ads campaigns and personalized ads weren't shown to the user, meaning targeting settings didn't allow to reach such users. They could see only less relevant ads, while their installs went into organic traffic.

After the release of iOS 14.3, LAT turned into 2 separate settings:

1. Allow Apps to Request to Track. The AAtRtT setting allows users to opt in or out of allowing apps to request user consent to access app-related data. Thus, if this setting is off, you won’t see the ATT request.

2. Personalized Ads. This setting allows users to turn off personalized ads on their devices to limit Apple from using the information to serve ads that may be more relevant to the user. It seems like the Personalized Ads setting governs targeting – it’s like LAT, but decoupled from the attribution piece. Personalized Ads are on by default, but if you had LAT enabled before – Personalized Ads will be off.

The key change here is that as of iOS 14.3 and later, Apple introduced the App Tracking Transparency framework (ATT) that requires app developers to request permission from users to track their activity across other companies' apps and websites. This framework gives users more control over their privacy and the data that's collected about them.

By default, a user is opted out of tracking when the app launches. To gain user permission, the ATT framework presents an app-tracking authorization request to the user. The ATT request works on a per-app basis, meaning that users can decide to opt-in for specific apps as they choose.

❗ The ATT consent pop-up is displayed only if the user has set Allow Apps to Request to Track to On in the device settings.

For users who opt out of tracking, the IDFA returns a string of 0s. For users who opt-in, the IDFA is available and can be used for attribution purposes.

Note. For users who had selected Limit Ad Tracking in settings before updating to iOS 14.3, apps cannot even prompt them for permission to enable tracking (but users can always change this in settings if they choose).

🔹 In iOS 14.3 and later, due to the framework called AdServices, Apple is still able to pass limited attribution information to the ad network even if the user has opted out of tracking, that is regardless of the AAtRtT setting of a device or per-app permission settings of the user. This has become possible because Apple takes a privacy-first approach to gathering attribution on its side and doesn't share sensitive information with third parties.

This all is intended to help advertisers measure the effectiveness of their ad campaigns without compromising user privacy.

With attribution via Apple Ads API, MMP doesn't need an identifier to match a user and a click to an ad. This framework is built into their SDK. To track and attribute subsequent post-install data for opt-out users, MMPs use their own tools.

Note. If you didn't integrate the AdServices framework in your tracker, you can notice this by having low attribution rates.

🔹 After the iAd framework was deprecated in February 2023, installs from users with iOS 14.2 and earlier may be attributed to the organics, meaning that the installs and in-app events cannot be attributed to a specific advertising campaign.

❗ According to iOS Version Market Share Worldwide | Statcounter Global Stats, devices with versions of iOS 14.2 or earlier have a small percentage which is not critical for attribution.

🔹 Personalized Ads setting is in charge of showing more relevant ads to the user. If a user has a Personalized Ads setting turned off, that will prevent Apple Ads from knowing them as a returning customer. So, you may notice a higher redownload share when using the New users setting in user acquisition campaigns.

As for SplitMetrics Acquire, the platform adapted to the changes that MMPs are implementing. This way we have all the needed parameters for attribution. This data is enough for us to bridge the data from Apple Ads and MMP and present it up to the keywords level.