Asian Tech Press -- The Chinese tech giant's ad tracking technology failed, as Apple refused to update apps for them, according to the Financial Times.
At the WWDC 2020, Apple Inc. announced a new feature of iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS 14.5, App Tracking Transparency (ATT).
The iOS 14.5 featuring ATT was released on April 27, 2021. Apple began requiring developers to get explicit permission from users before accessing the iPhone's Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA).
The change for Apple's IDFA will have a large impact on developers, promoters, and advertisers alike.
The U.S. tech giant requires developers in all countries to comply with this new privacy rule, and it is considered a violation to attempt to bypass the rule for tracking purposes.
But the reality is that most users don't want their information collected and tracked, which leads to a continued impact on ad revenue for the tech giants.
Chinese tech giants' CAID initiative
To circumvent Apple's restrictions, China's technology giants have been trying to develop a new way of tracking iPhones for advertising, called CAID, an Internet advertising identifier since 2020. It was led by two Beijing-affiliated groups, the China Advertising Association (CAA) and the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT).
Such private advertising identifiers allow for the continued identification and persistent tracking of specific users and the delivery of targeted ads based on their interests.
Companies involved in drafting the rules for the new identifier include Tencent Holdings, ByteDance, Alibaba, Xiaomi, Baidu, Huawei, CAICT, and the Shanghai Data Exchange (SDE).
With CAID, Internet companies can improve the accuracy of ad delivery and screen the authenticity of traffic. And the ability to track does have a significant influence on the advertising industry.
It does not actually ask for the user's permission to start tracking them, and it is clear that CAID violates Apple's privacy rules. Apple then went on a downward spiral.
Developers who tried to use private Internet advertising identifiers in their own apps found their apps rejected by Apple for updates, and Apple demanded that the tracking code be removed.
CAID's failure
According to the Financial Times, it appears that the Chinese tech giants currently involved in the CAID program have given up on pushing it any further after being denied an app update by Apple.
No developer is willing to collect user information at the risk of their app not being updated or being dropped. After all, they face much greater potential losses if violating the rules.
ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, did not respond to the Financial Times' request for comment, while Tencent and Baidu declined to comment. And Apple graciously accepted the request.
Apple said the App Store's terms and guidelines apply to all developers around the world , and apps found to be ignoring user choices will be denied for updates.
