Report from DPA International
In Brief – Apple is saying that it might turn off its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature in Europe due to regulatory pressure that the iPhone giant attributes to lobbying from the advertising industry. ATT is the Apple policy that requires all third-party apps to get explicit, upfront approval from iPhone users to collect their online browsing data for use in digital advertising. Announced in 2020 as a big privacy win, it was quickly challenged by ad industry competitors as a discriminatory policy that would help Apple grow its own ad business. Antitrust investigations have been underway for years in France, Germany, Poland and Italy. Apple has consistently argued that its apps do not collect data when users engage on apps from other providers, but regulators have raised concerns with how Apple combines user data from its App Store, Apple ID, connected devices, and other first-party apps and uses it for advertising purposes. In February, Germany’s antitrust regulator announced its preliminary determination that the ATT policy discriminates against third-party app developers, and in April, France’s antitrust agency fined Apple 150 million euros based on similar concerns.
Context – Targeted advertising continues to create huge policy crosscurrents in the digital policy space. It is more efficient and effective than less-targeted forms of advertising, which greatly benefits small businesses with small ad budgets, while the value created by the advertising funds many popular and helpful online sites and services. But privacy advocates have long-opposed online data collection and Apple has been a well heeled ally. Their business model, built on tightly controlled “walled gardens” selling privacy, security, and seamless premium user experiences, has been very popular with EU users. Their aggressive privacy advocacy slowed down regulatory challenges to ATT. But EU law, in particular the Digital Market Act (DMA), now basically rejects Apple’s core walled garden model. Ironically, Meta, a major critic of Apple’s ATT, feels like it is equally hard done by in Europe as the DMA is also being used to overturn its targeted ads-based business model.