For iOS 15 users, Apple has begun prompting them to agree to enable personalized advertising for their Apple ID. This allows Apple to use your App Store purchase history and other statistics during use to inform in the news and stock apps What ads to display and search ads for the App Store.
Apple’s advertising targeting, or what Apple calls personalized advertising, was previously enabled by default without any form of prompting. Users must understand this preference by themselves and go deep into the four-level menu in the settings to disable it, which to some extent violates Apple’s image of privacy first.
The fact that it is turned on by default has also led to antitrust review, especially when Apple has restricted the ability of third-party advertising networks to target individual users by introducing transparency in application tracking. However, a very similar system of its first-party advertising does not require any such permission.
For example, in France, Apple is currently facing antitrust complaints, claiming that Apple’s users do not fully understand the use and processing of their personal data when it comes to advertising positioning.
It is possible that this new tip in iOS 15 was added in response to the upcoming court battle. In addition to the user consent dialog that appears when the App Store is opened on iOS 15, Apple has also added a link to information about Personalized Recommendations in the App Store page of the Settings application.
As before, users can change their preferences at any time by entering Settings -> Privacy -> Apple Ads and changing the switch of Personalized Ads. Now, the addition of dialogue interpreters makes Apple’s advertising policy more consistent with third-party developers’ requirements as part of the transparency of application tracking.
Even though Apple’s use of advertising targeting has never technically been within the scope of the ATT rules (because this is all first-party data, and ATT only applies to data sharing with third parties), it feels fairer to do so.
