This week, at its annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple made several privacy-related announcements that will have an impact on how marketers connect with their customers and how publishers monetise inventory. Here’s a quick recap on two key updates, and what you can do to take action today:
What Apple announced
IP address blocking with ITP
Apple is upgrading intelligent tracking protection (ITP) to block internet protocol (IP) addresses for the use of targeting and measurement. This is largely aimed at fingerprinting solutions, which collect various browser signals to develop an ID for a user. Fingerprinting collects data without the user’s knowledge or consent and goes against the privacy wave that has been forming across the ecosystem for the past five years. While fingerprinting offers the allure of scale, it damages consumer trust and is not a sustainable solution. Apple’s changes will have a severe impact on fingerprinting ID providers operating in Safari, and it’s likely to make their solutions ineffective.
What does this mean for marketers? This update reinforces the importance of buying on people-based identifiers rooted in consumer trust. Marketers who need to be able to reach their consumers across channels and solutions based on IP addresses will not be able to on Safari going forward. People-based solutions rooted in authentication enable marketers to advertise across channels in compliance with browser regulations.
What does this mean for publishers? This update reinforces the need for publishers to establish trusted, first-party relationships with their readers. Readers who authenticate enable publishers to link their inventory to first-, second-, and third-party marketer data. Publishers should be wary of cookieless solutions that claim to offer identity without authentication—those solutions likely employ tactics that are not privacy-friendly or transparent to the consumer.
Hide My Email
Apple introduced “Hide My Email,” a service that creates a unique, random email address for use when completing online forms so each publisher receives a separate email address instead of the user’s true email address. This “relay” service forwards emails to the user’s actual account. “Hide My Email” is an extension of the “Sign In With Apple” feature to mobile apps.
What does this mean for publishers? Publishers need to prioritise establishing trust with consumers so they feel comfortable sharing their actual email address instead of the relay address. Further, publishers should consider investigating technologies that require the user’s true email address.
Tectonic restructuring of the industry
Apple’s news is the latest in a long line of announcements that has led to a massive restructuring of the digital landscape—all precipitated by the lack of transparency of data collection, its use, and the subsequent loss of consumer trust. Collectively, ITP, enhanced tracking protection (ETP), Chrome’s third-party cookie deprecation, DCM ID redaction, the iOS AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework, and the recent Android Advertising ID (AAID) opt-out changes aim to bring consumers back into focus, requiring marketers and publishers to earn their trust by developing direct relationships.
LiveRamp has been prepared for these changes. We designed our Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS) with consumer privacy and trust at its core. It’s purpose-built to give marketers and publishers control over their data and identity while upholding consumer transparency, choice, and control so marketers and publishers can build trust with customers. A foundation of trust helps move consumers into a deeper relationship with the brand. It involves the exchange of their information (authentication) for real value and better experiences, and it’s this value exchange that is critical to enabling personalised consumer journeys.
ATS is also designed in alignment with the principles articulated by the large technology platform as they work to put consumer interests front and center. For example, ATS mimics the very approach Google has and continues to take with its own properties like Google Search and YouTube. ATS makes these capabilities available to non-walled garden publishers so the open web can compete on a level playing field and publishers can continue to provide the free content we all enjoy.
A time to act
Industry changes aren’t slowing down. LiveRamp can help you build your first-party data asset with identity resolution and deliver meaningful experiences with ATS, ensuring world-class addressability and measurability. ATS is proven to deliver better results for brands and publishers.
Marketers: It’s past time to move off cookie-, MAID-, and IP-based workflows. This means buying and measuring on RampID across channels and deploying authentication-based solutions to create first- and second-party segments to measure the results of your campaign. You’ll continue to have the choice of buying directly from an enabled DSP or via private marketplace deal IDs through enabled SSPs. Buying on RampID combines all sources of LiveRamp’s people-based addressability, ATS, CTV IDs via IP, third-party cookies, and mobile devices to enable brands to efficiently buy and measure across channels. This gives brands the scale of the device/browser identifiers while they exist and simultaneously protects brand investments when buying on ATS inventory.
Publishers: Deploy ATS and join the hundreds of publishers worldwide who have opened up new revenue streams (from previously unaddressable environments like Safari, Edge, and Firefox) and improved CPMs (like Microsoft, the world’s second largest publisher, who has seen a 40% increase).
Get started today by reaching out to your LiveRamp representative, email us at [email protected].