App Transparency: Impacts & Importance

Much of the media industry’s sentiment around Apple’s new transparency requirements and its impact on advertisers has been ominous, with Facebook forecasting a 60% decrease in sales for small businesses. But what do all these requirements mean?

In short, Apple’s updates represent a serious wake up call to businesses to ensure they align their advertising with their bottom line! There are obviously a lot of complex technical and business considerations here, but we want to highlight the primary ethos behind this change.

Apple have stated that “apps on the App Store are held to a high standard for privacy, security, and content because nothing is more important than maintaining users’ trust.” The key term here being “trust”.

As users increasingly move toward a paperless future, much of their personal information is stored on their devices. In addition, they have become savvier about how this information is shared and stored via websites and apps. Therefore trust, security and transparency are key considerations for users in their digital uptake/usage.

Apple’s official take on this - “websites should not be able to attribute data of an ad click and a conversion to a single user as part of large-scale tracking.” - i.e. motivation for the private click measurement! This means that businesses and advertisers need to seriously rethink their approach to engaging with prospective customers.

Initial industry responses to Apple’s changes appear to be negative and wrought with concern over the potential impact on media performance. We, at D3, share these concerns and, in fact, we have begun to see this taking form in the efficiency and effectivity of some of our campaigns.

However, in the spirit of embracing a change that is here to stay, we encourage advertisers to begin aligning their marketing approach with this transparency framework, with trust being at the very core of their goals.

Businesses need to increasingly look at repositioning their messaging around building trust and brand reliability. Why should a user invest in their business? What benefit can they expect by choosing to share their personal data? Users can see through the fluff, so it’s important to strip back messaging to the bare bones – keep it simple and stay adaptable.

This is all, of course, a moving feast and we are trying to evolve with the times. But our key advice to our clients is to ensure they are continuously re-evaluating their value proposition, with user trust being at the core. In turn we are consistently striving to be at the forefront of understanding consumer behaviour through adapting our approach across all channels.

Watch this space.