IDFA opt-in and iOS 14.5 adoption across 10 major countries: fresh data

Will mobile marketers be able to continue to do their jobs. Or, has the mobile advertising ecosystem fundamentally changed due to Apple’s restriction of IDFA data (or, more accurately, making the iOS advertising identifier opt-in instead of automatically available, as it used to be).

There has been a ton of speculation lately about iOS 14.5, which dramatically changes privacy and marketing on iPhone and iPad.

This week, I analyzed a slice of my client Singular’s iOS data to see what’s going on: are people adopting iOS 14.5? How many are even seeing Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency prompt? And, of those who are seeing it, how many are opting in? Also, I look at some of the trends on global ad spend: iOS versus Android.

From the post:

The most trusting and giving country so far?

France, and not by a little: 30.5% of French iPhone owners grant ad tracking permission.

(And remember: more than 20% of French iOS devices that we’ve seen in the past four days have already updated to iOS 14.5.)

Average it all out, and 19.4% of all iOS users both see and allow tracking permission. Interestingly, there seems to be a very consistent grouping of countries at the 23% level, while the rest are mostly in the 15-18% range. China is the lowest at under 14%.

I would suggest caution in reading too much into these numbers right now. As we get more data it would not be shocking to see France revert to the mean a little, and China to increase somewhat as well. There very likely will be national and regional trends, but I would like to see more data over more time from a larger percentage of people in each region before asserting with confidence that the French people love tracking and Chinese people are privacy fanatics.

Get the full report and all the data in my post on Singular’s blog