Ad Industry Waiting to See What App Tracking Transparency Fallout is

The advertising industry is waiting with bated breath for the arrival of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency. The feature will arrive in iOS 14.5 and make sure users are asked they want to be tracked across other apps and websites. AdWeek’s Andrew Blustein looked at what the fallout might be (Apple News link).

The median opt-in rate so far is 32%, according to an analysis of 300 apps across 2,000 devices from AppsFlyer, a mobile marketing and attribution company. The analysis found that apps with higher consumer affinity saw higher opt-in rates, hovering around 40%. It remains to be seen whether those opt-in rates will stay consistent when ATT roles out widely. Dating app Bumble said in its S-1 filing that it expects opt-in rates to be between 0-20%. Demonstrating the breadth of the identifier, Trade Desk said that 10% of the 12 million ad opportunities per second on its platform are tied to an IDFA. If opt-out rates are high and IDFAs do become scarce, app developers and publishers should expect to see a 50% decline of in-app CPMs, said Joe Root, co-founder of Permutive, a publisher-focused data management platform. This mirrors the impact media owners saw when Apple introduced ITP, he said.

Picture-in-picture Back in Hulu on iOS 14

Picture-in-picture has returned for Hulu users running iOS 14, MacRumors reported. The feature had been available for a short period before but was then removed for updadtes.

In the early days of ‌iOS 14‌ in September, Hulu briefly supported picture-in-picture for ‌iPhone‌ users. Hulu soon removed support, however, to refine the feature and “work on a few updates to provide the best experience for our viewers.” Hulu has quietly welcomed back support with the latest update to the app, alongside the typical bug fixes and improvements. Apple introduced picture-in-picture for the ‌iPhone‌ with ‌iOS 14‌, allowing users to continue watching a video while also browsing other apps on their device. Popular video-based apps such as Netflix have supported the feature for some time, while others like YouTube for iOS have not.