When iOS 14 comes out, Apple will disable preset tracking. Facebook and Co. have to ask for permission if they want to use and pass on our data for advertising purposes. So will the update change the advertising industry from the ground up? An analysis.

Apple has already released a preview for iOS 14. The new operating system is expected to arrive in autumn 2020 and will make “everything even more helpful and personal”.

For example, we can expect new widgets that give us more information at a glance. A new app media library will automatically organize our apps in a user-friendly view. And a picture-in-picture function lets us continue watching videos if we want to use another app at the same time.

Users can therefore confidently look forward to the new operating system – very different from the advertising industry, because iOS 14 brings other, very important innovations with it.

iOS 14: Apps need to get ad tracking permission

Apple is tightening data protection considerably and switching off automatic advertising tracking. This means that apps must first obtain permission from users if they want to collect, use and pass on data for advertising purposes.

Apple itself exempts itself from this rule. His in-house advertising platform is still allowed to track us and display personalized or interest-based advertising. According to Heise developers who have access to the beta version of iOS 14 report this.

Now, of course, the advertising industry fears that many users will refuse tracking and that they will be able to display significantly less personalized advertising than before.

The British business and financial news broadcaster CNBC has already told Facebook that the iOS update could lead to a collapse of its so-called audience network advertising business – by a full 50 percent.

Facebook is sounding the alarm

With Facebook’s Audience Network, developers can advertise in their apps. This is played on the basis of the data that Facebook has collected from its users.

And so far, Facebook and Co. have been able to use the IDFA provided by Apple to collect this data. This is an identification number for users of Apple devices.

Advertisers could use them to see whether, for example, an advertising campaign resulted in a user installing a particular app.

This identifier from Apple should now be switched off with iOS 14. Users have to activate it manually for each app if they want the corresponding applications to track their data.

In summary, the new operating system can massively restrict the advertising tracking of user data.

How far can iOS 14 change the advertising industry?

So it looks like iOS 14 will be a real boon to users and a real threat to advertisers.

Until now, advertising tracking has been an extremely lucrative business model. Facebook and Co. were extremely dependent on it to display advertising and ultimately make a profit.

In addition, many users were or are not even aware of how valuable their data is. And above all that your data is tracked and used to display interest-based advertising.

Seen in this way, advertising tracking has always been morally questionable. And if the advertisers fail to actively point this out to users and convince them to reactivate the function, they have to come up with something completely new.

The advertising industry seems to be facing a fundamental change – whatever it will ultimately look like.