As IOS 14.5+ Adoption Grows, Which App Categories Are Seeing the Highest – and Lowest – IDFA Presence?

September 16, 2021

Pubmatic IDFA Presence by Category Sept2021Although many people do not limit the number of apps they use, a majority of app users don’t feel that apps respect their privacy. In response to privacy concerns, Apple’s iOS 14.5 update gives users the ability to block the Apple ID for advertisers (IDFA), therefore making it difficult for advertisers to track users. Since the implementation of the new iOS, data from PubMatic indicates that users are more open to being tracked on certain app categories than others.

With the rollout of iOS 14.5, apps on Apple devices are now required to request “the user’s permission before tracking their data across apps or websites owned by other companies for advertising, or sharing their data with data brokers.” The adoption of the new operating system and its subsequent updates has been growing steadily since its initial release. By mid-July 2021, two-thirds (67%) of total iOS app ad requests were on iOS 14.5+.

An analysis of data over a 4-week timespan shows that app users are more likely to opt-in on apps in some categories than they are in others. Among the app categories with the highest IDFA presence in iOS 14.5+, are Shopping (79%), Automotive (79%), Business (79%), Games (75%) and Health & Fitness (74%). PubMatic hypothesizes that the high IDFA presence in these categories is driven by users wanting to know about new products, the latest news and game titles.

On the other end of the spectrum, app categories with the lowest IDFA presence in iOS 14.5+ include Education (19%), Food & Drink (26%), Personal Finance (45%), Community (51%) and Technology and Computing (51%).

These new IDFA restrictions have prompted advertisers to shift more of their mobile app ad spend towards Android. For example, PubMatic’s data for the week of May 2nd shows that 54% of mobile app ad spend was allocated to Android spending, but by the week of July 18th, that share had grown to 63%.

You can download the full infographic here.

About the Data: Findings are based on a 4-week sample dataset from June 27-July 4, 2021. Games are based on a sample dataset from July 26, 2021 for the top 500 games.

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