Is iOS eating your ad budget? Here’s how to fight back

Lia Bartley

Recently, Apple has been playing the ultimate chess game with privacy, and every marketer is watching the board.

Apple launched App Tracking Transparency back in April 2021, forcing apps to ask users for permission to follow their digital breadcrumbs across other apps and websites. The result? A staggering drop off in tracking permissions, only around 4% of iPhone users let apps track them now. That’s not just a nudge, it’s a gut-punch to data-hungry ad campaigns.

Around the same time, Safari’s Link Tracking Protection came along with iOS 17 in September 2023. It strips tracking parameters from URLs in private browsing, Safari, Mail and Messages. That means you click a link, and poof, your campaign tracking vanishes from the URL.

Then, there’s Mail Privacy Protection from iOS 15 in September 2021. Apple preloads every mail pixel via proxy servers and hides IP addresses, so open rate metrics inflate, location data disappears and email engagement stats go haywire. Marketers become metric-guessers instantly.

France slapped Apple with a €150 million fine for making targeting opt outs harder, and publishers aren’t too happy about Distraction Control in iOS 18 blocking ads on webpages. The very core of digital advertising has taken a serious hit.

So, how does all this affect your marketing? Contextual intelligence, first party data and aggregated attribution tech like Apple’s Private Click Measurement will be your lifeline. Strategies should pivot away from micro-targeting and third party cookies; you need to lean into broader, narrative-driven ad messaging and robust email flows based on clicks and conversions.

In short, if you thought privacy was a nice-to-have plug-in for your campaigns, Apple’s latest privacy blitz proves it’s the foundation of digital marketing now. Embrace the pivot or get left behind.

Want to team up with experts who keep up to date on the latest in all things digital marketing? Get in touch with us at Engage Web today.

About
Latest Posts

Lia Bartley

Content Editor at Engage Web

With years of experience in the financial sector, Lia has swapped the world of mis-sold PPI in exchange for life as an eagle-eyed editor at Engage Web, ensuring our wonderful clients have equally wonderful content on their websites.