How to Submit Your App When it Uses IDFA

On April 11th, Applereleased updated guidelines for iTunes Connecton how app developers can use IFA (IDFA). Accordingly, we addressthese new guidelines in respect to the use of MobileAppTracking andimplementing our iOS SDKs into your apps as a third-party.

When you submit your apps with iTunes Connect, you’ll now beprompted with three checkboxes certifying your intentions to useIFA for:

• Serve advertisements within the app.
• Attribute this app installation to a previously servedadvertisement.
• Attribute an action taken within this app to a previously servedadvertisement

As a client of MobileAppTracking with our iOS SDK installed in yourapps, we hope the following will help you sort through the newcheckboxes when submitting your app.

“Serve advertisements within the app”

It’s recommended you display ads within your app if you want tocollect the IFA with our SDK implementation. Our SDK does not haveany functionality to display ads nor do we use IFA to help youserve ads within your app. If you are using IFA to serveadvertisements, this would be done with another third-party focusedon helping you monetize your app or some internal technology yourcompany uses to display advertisements in your app. This check boxshould be checked based on if you display ads or not in yourapp.

“Attribute this app installation to a previously servedadvertisement”

MobileAppTracking’s primary value to you is providing advertisingattribution. MobileAppTracking uses two methods to attribute aninstall back to an advertisement,identifiermatching and devicefingerprinting. IFA is the uniqueidentifier used with iOS devices. As describedin our methodologiesof attribution, IFA provides measurement with 1:1 accuracywhile device fingerprinting accuracy is based on statisticalprobability. Thus, using IFA for attribution is more accurate andshould be used when possible. If our iOS SDK is implemented in yourapp to collect IFA (recommended), then this checkbox should beselected.

“Attribute an action taken within this app to a previously servedadvertisement”

This selection refers to Re-engagement.With Re-engagement the user is an existing user with the appalready installed. Re-engagement is when an existing user of an appsees an ad and then opens the app and generates in-app events.Similar to install attribution, IFA can be used when attributingevents to ads as part of our identifier matching process. When ouriOS SDK is implemented in your apps, we will use IFA to attributeevents to ads as part of Event Re-engagement. Thus, when your appis implemented to collect IFA and you are measuring at least oneother event besides the install, then this check box should beselected as well as we will use IFA for event attribution.

 

 

iOS Limited Ad Tracking

The MobileAppTracking SDK does collect the iOS “Limited AdTracking” setting with all requests when IFA is collected. Apple'sAPI documentation for theASIdentifierManager classoutlines the Limited Ad Tracking functionality as follows:

“Check the value of this property before performing any advertisingtracking. If the value is NO, use the advertising identifier onlyfor the following purposes: frequency capping, conversion events,estimating the number of unique users, security and frauddetection, and debugging.”

Accordingly, we only use the IFA for “conversion events, estimatingthe number of unique users, security and fraud detection”. We don’tuse the IFA value for any other purposes. The data is also owned byyou, our client, and not us as outlined in our ServiceAgreement.

So when Limited Ad Tracking is enabled we still use IFA for thepurposes outlined above. We never use IFA for any retargeting orbehavioral profiling.

Your advertising partners, including ones we are integrated with,may use IFA for other purposes not permitted when limited adtracking is enabled by the user. When using our Server Postbackmechanism for installs and events that include the IFA value it’srequired to include the LimitedAd Tracking setting in the server postback andit’s up to the advertising partner you are working with to complyaccordingly based on the user’s preference.