How Are Consumers Reacting To Apple's ATT Framework?

By the end of April 2021, Apple officially released iOS 14.5 and thus began enforcing its AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework. While this was big news in the programmatic ad tech space, how have these changes been resonating with Apple mobile device owners? 

To find out, we turned to InMobi Pulse, InMobi’s mobile research solution. In June, we polled close to 750 adults across the U.S. who owned an iPhone or iPad to ask them about whether or not they knew about Apple's proposed changes and how they would react to the opt-in prompts. Here’s what we uncovered. 

Uncovering Consumer Awareness of ATT Changes 

As part of the proposed changes from Apple, all apps that share data will be required to display a prompt asking app end users whether or not they are okay with having their individual device identifier (IDFA) collected and shared. But do consumers know that Apple is making these changes? 

According to our data, the answer so far is mostly yes. Over half of consumers said they were aware of these prompts, including 55% of men and 56% of women. 

Naturally, people who were using iOS 14.5 or higher were more likely than others to be aware of the changes. While 57% of consumers with devices running operating system version iOS 14.0 through 14.4.2 noticed the ATT prompt, the figure jumped to 70% for consumers with iOS 14.5 or higher on their Apple mobile devices. 

To put these figures into perspective, around 50% of all Apple devices worldwide were running iOS 14.5 or higher as of the week of June 13, according to InMobi Exchange data – and the global percentage was at 20% the week before. That means that a lot of consumers were not yet using a version of iOS that requires the opt-in prompts when we ran our consumer research. 

Overall, younger Americans were more likely than older Americans to know about the changes. Just 35% of those over the age of 55 were aware of the prompt, but the figure climbed to 62% for those between 35 and 54 years old and to 77% for those between 18 and 34 years old. 

Besides older Americans, the cohort to have the least awareness of the prompt were wealthy people in the U.S. Among those making over $75,000 annually, 53% said they were aware of the prompt, compared to 58% for those making $75,000 or less a year. 

Interested in diving deeper on this topic? Be sure to check out inmobi.com/idfa, which is our webpage dedicated to all things iOS 14.5+.