With the release of iOS 15, Apple has made it clear as daylight – they are not stopping with privacy updates.
One of the most significant updates in iOS 15 is Apple Private Relay. No, it’s not a complete game-changer like ATT. Nevertheless, it is a big update and marketers need to understand its impact on advertising and attribution to get ready for the change.
What is Apple Private Relay?
Apple Private Relay is a privacy-focused beta feature currently available for Apple iCloud Plus users (paid iCloud upgrade).
Since the feature is available for this group of users only (for now), it is also known as iCloud Private Relay.
Here’s what it’s all about.
Apple Private Relay is created to prevent iOS users from being tracked while using the Safari browser. This is done by hiding the users’ IP addresses and browsing activity in a way that no third party can see it.
At the moment, to access the feature, Apple users need to fulfill three conditions:
- use the Safari browser
- pay for the iCloud Plus service
- activate Private Relay in the settings
How Apple Private Relay works
Normally, when people are browsing the web, their IP address is exposed. It can be seen by their network providers and the websites they visit.
This data can then be used to build a user’s advertising profile based on browsing history and location.
It’s not a very private process.
However, when a user enables Apple Private Relay, things are different.
Private Relay protects the users’ privacy by ensuring no party in the process has access to all of their details.
How is this done?
Apple Private Relay separates a user’s web request through two relays (proxy servers).
While one proxy receives the request, the other one forwards it to the server. Upon that, they make contact and return with the content the user requested.
In this process, the user’s real IP address gets masked. They are assigned with a fake IP in their region, but not in their actual location. Something similar to a VPN.
Thanks to all this, no third party can collect all the dots on a particular user. Nope, not even Apple.
How many people will use Apple Private Relay: Factors to consider
One of the key questions that arise with Private Relay is – how many people will actually use this feature?
As mentioned earlier, currently, there are several conditions users need to fulfill to enable it, and all of them affect this number.
The number of Safari users
The first condition to accessing Private Relay is using the Safari browser. Safari is basically the default browser for iOS users – it has a market share of 90% among iOS users (Net Market Share).
The number of iCloud subscribers
The next condition is users paying for an iCloud subscription. This won’t significantly minimize the number of users who will use Private Relay either.
Over 700 million iOS users already pay for subscription services (Singular). Not all of these users are iCloud Plus users, but most of them are. One of the reasons for that is its affordability – in the U.S., this service costs only 99 cents/month.
The number of people very concerned about privacy
The final condition to go all-private on Safari is – heading to the settings and manually enabling Private Relay.
This is quite a hassle for people.
As such, it will greatly affect the number of Apple Private Relay users.
The thing is, unlike Apple’s ATT prompt, Private Relay doesn’t pop up on the users’ screens. At the moment, it is buried in the settings, and users need to be very motivated to pay a visit there.
However, Private Relay can be compared with another ATT feature – disabling ATT at the device level. To do this, users need to visit the settings, just like with Private Relay.
How many people do this? According to Singular, 20% to 30% of users.
From this, we can conclude that this is the percentage of Apple users who are very concerned about their privacy. If these people don’t want to be tracked across apps, they probably don’t want to be tracked across the web either.
These are the predictions for now, while the feature is still in the beta version and hidden in the settings. But when Private Relay rolls out completely, it is expected a lot more users will be using it.
For this reason, it’s important to be prepared and know what to expect from it.
What Apple Private Relay means for attribution
One of the reasons Private Relay was created was to prevent advertisers from using a popular attribution method – fingerprinting.
This is a process advertisers use to collect data on users who have interacted with their ads. Thanks to publicly available web browser data, they can gain access to the users’ IP addresses, locations, device types, and much more.
All of this forms a unique device identifier – a “fingerprint”.
With a “fingerprint”, marketers can distinguish users and track the way they interact with their brand. In most cases, fingerprinting is used for retargeting and mobile attribution.
The most important piece of information in fingerprinting is the user’s IP address. Since Private Relay is all about masking this information, it makes it impossible for marketers to use this attribution method.
It is important to note that fingerprinting is already quite limited, as most major platforms don’t allow it (Facebook, Google, etc). According to Singular, marketers can currently track about 25% of iOS users with fingerprinting.
This may not seem like a lot, but since iOS is huge, this is still quite a lot of users.
The effects on web-to-app attribution
Ever since IDFA depreciation happened, some app advertisers have turned to web-to-app attribution.
They would attract users to their own web properties and collect their data with fingerprinting. Next, they would deliver download links to direct them to their app.
Private Relay puts an end to this practice – at least on Safari.
To overcome this obstacle, marketers will need to come up with new and innovative ways of collecting first-party data. For example, by asking a user for their phone number or email to deliver the download link.
That doesn’t sound very fortunate, right?
Generally, to make up for the loss of third-party tracking, all marketers will need to improve their ability to acquire, keep, and use first-party data. Want to learn more about probabilistic attribution for IOS14+! Check out this article!
Apple Private Relay and deferred deep linking
App marketers who rely on deferred deep linking will also take a hit from Private Relay.
Deferred deep linking is a process in which new users are directed to a specific section in an app.
Let’s say a user sees an ad for a photo & video editing app while browsing the mobile web.
If the ad only displays video editing features, and the user clicks it – this is probably what they want from the app. By incorporating a deep link, app advertisers can take them straight to the video editing section when they launch the app. Without a deep link, they would be taken to a default home screen.
In order to make deferred deep linking possible, the advertisers need the users’ IP addresses.
Therefore, for users who enable iCloud Private Relay, this won’t be possible. A deep link will take these users to the app’s default page, and app owners will not receive attribution data about this event.
If Apple adds this feature by default to all Apple devices, marketers would see stats go from 30% of users not tracked (average people saying no to give their iDFA) to approximately 60%. Which would mean they wouldn’t be able to track more than half of their users.
Here’s how you can measure and predict user acquisition in the privacy era
As you can see, measuring and understanding user acquisition is getting increasingly difficult.
With this in mind, we’ve developed a solution that can help you predict and measure your user acquisition journey – even in the era of iOS 15. Care to learn more? Schedule a demo or sign-up to our newsletter.
