What’s Happening?

Apple released its newest version of iOS on September 18, 2023. iOS 17 comes with new privacy and measurement updates across the digital ecosystem, which means more pivoting is needed by advertisers.

To remain competitive in the market to Apple device users, advertisers who deliver on Apple-owned apps — including Safari and iMessage, as well as any app within the App Store — will need to work within these new regulations.

Background

The release of iOS 17 will be a continued iteration of Apple’s focus on privacy enforcement for users and tracking limitations for advertisers and app owners.

One of the updates, Link Tracking Protection, provides fingerprint protection by removing any identifiable information from URLs accessed within Safari private browsing or shared between messages and Apple mail. The valuable parameters to be removed from these URLs include the Facebook fbclid and the Google gclid.

Apple also introduced their Private Click Measurement, which uses a new inbrowser Safari API to help resolve conversion measurement This feature will only apply to ads with a direct user journey from click to web, allowing advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns while respecting user privacy

In addition to web browsing tracking changes, the introduction of SKAdNetwork 5 0 requires SDKs to include a Privacy Manifest to verify their data practices are compliant with Apple privacy regulations for apps Apple then reserves the right to ban the app from the app store This aims to limit advertisers’ ability to use “fingerprinting” tracking, where companies can access and trade devices’ signals to identify and target users