This year’s WWDC is indeed more wonderful than the previous two years, with more than 200 sessions alone. We had a rough review last week, and I plan to pick some interesting topics to write about in the next few weeks. In addition, although a lot of changes, but many are Android how many years ago some things 🙄.

What is IDFA?

Those of you who are familiar with iOS development should be familiar, but maybe some of you who are new to the pit don’t know much about it, so let’s talk about it a little bit here.

IDFA stands for Identity for Advertisers. It is the device IDENTIFIER that Apple randomly assigns to users’ devices. However, IDFA is not bound with the device. In some cases, IDFA may be modified, and it cannot fully represent the unique code of the device.

Some of you may wonder why Apple provides such an identifier. Doesn’t each device have a unique code bound to it?

Of course, the earliest developers used MAC address or UDID as the unique code of the device, which is equivalent to the ID card of the device. However, in order to protect privacy, Apple did not allow developers to obtain it as early as 2012. However, advertisers need device identifiers to track and identify users. It is used to monitor the effectiveness of the delivery in order to provide customized advertising (practical applications go beyond that, personalized recommendations + multi-channel rely on identifying users, but advertising is indeed the most widespread use).

Why is IDFA important to advertisers?

IDFA is an accurate way for ads to track iOS users. By assigning each device to a separate IDFA, the advertiser can track the IDFA during each campaign to further determine the quality of the user and determine whether the user installed as a result of the campaign.

IDFA also provides users with an acceptable level of privacy. This has additional implications for advertisers, but IDFA’s depersonalization of user data ensures that data protection is effective – preventing advertisers from being caught up in data privacy issues.

(excerpt from Adjust)

How to balance user privacy with advertisers (who are dad 😏, after all)?

Therefore, Apple designed a set of identifier IDFA unrelated to hardware for advertisers to use. At the same time, in order to take care of user privacy, users are supported to open the “Restricted advertising tracking” in “Settings -> Privacy -> Advertising”, so that App cannot obtain effective IDFA for targeted advertising. You can also reset the IDFA by “restoring the AD Identifier”.

Obviously, a user-enabled identifier that users can turn off and modify wasn’t enough to satisfy advertisers, but after a bit of a battle of wits, eventually everyone had to accept Apple’s design (or else it wouldn’t be on the shelves), something like this




Source network

What’s changed in iOS14?

Before iOS14, IDFA switch is unified management, open and close and restore are for all apps, but at least Apple is open by default, if you want to close, the user needs to set the page to close.




IOS14 before

But after iOS14 comes out, Apple will further strengthen IDFA privacy, each App will need to apply for user permission to obtain IDFA, Apple is no longer enabled by default, users can set in the “Settings -> Privacy ->Tracking” or App permission management page.




IOS14 adjustment

How can developers upgrade the adaptation?

Since Apple has increased the privacy rights of IDFA (the same as cameras and albums), apps that do not upgrade will not be able to obtain IDFA.

Upgrading adaptation is simple:

1. Add privacy Settings in info.plistPrivacy - Tracking Usage Description.

2. The introduction ofAppTrackingTransparencyFramework, callATTrackingManager.requestTrackingAuthorizationMethod to request permission.

3. After the permission is enabled, it is still usedASIdentifierManager.shared().advertisingIdentifier.uuidStringIn order to getIDFA.

Access requests are made when used, and if rejected, will be a meaningless string of zeros.

What are the likely effects?

Before iOS14, because Apple is enabled by default, in fact, the vast majority of users will not take the initiative to close, but the more sensitive to privacy protection of the area open rate is lower. After iOS14 brings IDFA to the fore, the likelihood of users turning it off will increase dramatically (since many people don’t know there are AD tracking restrictions).

From my own understanding, there are roughly the following influences:

  1. Multi-channel promotion is difficult to effectively attribute, so as to distinguish which platform to buy users.
  2. The precision delivery range is smaller, and the conversion cost increases.
  3. Third-party attribution platforms have a stronger voice because they can customize a common identifier to be used by their partner advertisers. The bigger the platform, the higher the value of the identifier.
  4. Once the user closed alone, promotion can not distinguish between old users, users into the black box.
  5. Further educating users about privacy,IDFAThe opening rate will decrease. Especially in Asian countries, the default on rate is very high. Once the installation prompt is carried out, the on rate is expected to be greatly affected.
  6. Some apps that cannot be updated can hardly be promoted effectively.

What can we do?

As it is difficult to estimate the actual impact, some people are a little panicked and are actively seeking countermeasures. Instead, people focus on SKAdNetwork released by Apple in 2018, which has been upgraded to version 2.0 from 1.0 in the past two years, adding more functions.

The working principle of SKAdNetwork can be refer to the official flow chart:

SKAdNetwork is a solution that allows AD platforms to track user clicks and installs without obtaining IDFA. Because Of Apple’s intervention, it will be directly across the device and the App Store, and will not reveal any device information to advertisers, and will be easier to prevent cheating.

IDFA can be used to bind any user information, but the information provided by SKAdNetwork is relatively poor. Interested students can further refer to the official documents:

{"version" : "2.0", "ad-network-id" : "com.example", "campaign-id" : 42, "transaction-id" : "6aafb7a5-0170-41b5-bbe4-fe71dedf1e28", "app-id" : 525463029, "attribution-signature" : "MDYCGQCsQ4y8d4BlYU9b8Qb9BPWPi+ixk\/OiRysCGQDZZ8fpJnuqs9my8iSQVbJO\/oU1AXUROYU=" "redownload": 1, "source-app-id": 1234567891 "conversion-value: 20 }Copy the code

The actual impact can only be accurately assessed after the official push, and there is no need to panic too much. Meanwhile, communicate with the cooperative attribution platform to keep an eye on it.

Related to the Session

  • Build trust through better privacy

Friendly tips:

Official no subtitles, English is not strong enough students, you can upload to Youtube, will automatically generate English subtitles and support translation, quite easy to use ~

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