Following the news that Apple is releasing its long-awaited update to restrict tracking by advertisers;

Laura Petrone, Senior Analyst in the Thematic Research team at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers her view:

“Apple’s iOS 14.5 update will dramatically impact the whole online advertising industry, as many people are unlikely to allow apps to track them. The sector was already in the middle of a profound reform, set in motion by GDPR, and further fuelled by the battle between Apple and Facebook over data privacy. While cookies enable hyper-targeted ads, they also pose risks to individual users’ privacy. Apple’s new privacy settings reflect this concern and the company’s ambition to become the data privacy champion continues.

“Apple’s changes also deal a heavy blow to targeted advertising: the main revenue source for the advertising industry. The impact will be devastating for small advertising companies and app developers. These are neither as well equipped or as diversified as big tech companies and will, therefore, struggle to navigate this uncertain time.

“However, while targeted advertising is critical to advertisers, post-GDPR, they have already been experimenting with new, less intrusive content offers. Contextual targeting, where ads are displayed based on a website’s content, increasingly represents a safer alternative to behavioral tracking, using AI technologies, such as computer vision, as essential tools.”