Are you an iOS user and not a huge fan of ads tracking your every move? Look no further as Apple has just announced that they have figured out a middle ground for advertisements and the internet users.
Ads can be a nuisance and a bit creepy, especially when they know exactly what you want, which is considered as a legal way of stalking users. Additionally, with privacy issues on social platforms being a hot potato topic within the Tech Giants — Apple has taken upon themselves to do a significant change on their own web browser, Safari.
In short, with Apple introducing the Privacy Preserving Ad Click Attribution the ad will now know it has been clicked by someone but the identity of the person will not be revealed to the ad company itself, ultimately preserving user privacy. Below are four of the key changes Apple has promised to implement by later this year:
- Ad companies will not be able to assign a unique tracking code for each individual when they click on the ads anymore.
- 3rd parties will be cut off and only the website the ad that was clicked will be notified.
- Ad click and conversion data will be delayed by up to 2 days and sent through a dedicated private browsing window to ensure it’s not associated with any other browsing data.
- Apple will be able to do this at the browser level, limiting how much data the ad networks and merchants can see.
Apple seems confident that they will be able to implement this, even though they need to collaborate with the World Wide Web Consortium and many other web browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, as they all want to win over the privacy crowd.
I’m on the fence on this one as it seems like it is a viable solution, as it is not detrimental to the companies in regards to data collection and at the same time, users are also protected on their personal information.
However, with the unique tracking code taken away, it may lead to a drop in loyal users to the respective brands and products as they may not be seeing the ads that they necessarily want to see. To be clear, this particular update does not stop ads from popping so the quality of ads that are not customised to the user will decline.
But as the saying goes, time will tell if this update, will actually make a huge difference in regards to privacy technology and internet user satisfaction.